The rivals of Sherlock Holmes : early detective stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

not step into, he was cautioned by a pain in his heart that was like a brief bright star.
    “I must take it easy,” he said to his wife. “I think I’m overdoing it.”
    “You’re restless,” she said. “Let me make you a drink.”
    Munday was one of those men who looked at his watch before he had his first drink of the day. His rule on weekdays was no alcohol before sundown, and he was obedient to the rule. It was dark; he said yes; Emma poured the gin out, and only then did Munday look at his watch and see that it was four-fifteen, that sundown was at mid-afternoon and that he would be drunk before dinner.
    “Emma, look at the time!”
    Emma laughed and handed him his drink. She said, “It looks as if we’ll have to adjust our habits. It gets dark so early in winter. I’d forgotten. I must remember to get a bottle of sherry from Mr. Flack.” “Amontillado,” said Munday. “That’s a good drink for this time of day.”
    They talked at length about what drinks they would depend on through the winter. Then Munday said, “The freight hasn’t come. What do you suppose is keeping them?”
    “This isn’t a very easy place to find,” said Emma. “And there’s just that brass knocker out front. I wonder if we can hear it from here?”
    They were seated before the living-room fireplace. Munday said, “Is the outside light on? It should be. And if the kitchen’s dark they might be put off and go away.”
    “I’ll have a look.”
    “I’ll do it,” said Munday, bijt he didn’t rise. Then Emma was out of the room and her opening and shutting the door made a damp breeze from the dark hall settle on Munday’s shoulders. He shuddered and leaned towards the fire and warmed himself.
    There were his fires, but still dark and cold parts of the house remained. Now they were in a place where doors were always kept shut; a house was not an open sunlit breezy place, but many separate closed rooms, one or two of suffocating smallness, and each with its own smell and temperature and purpose. Already the house had doubtful comers, the alarmingly cluttered box room where they put their empty suitcases, the drafty unlighted stairs with its protruding candle-holders on the walls, and the several doors which swung unaided by a hand and surprised him when their iron latches clanked; the dark back hall where there were so many rubber boots and raincoats and walking sticks—he’d find a light for it, but who did all that clobber belong to? He could not be certain they were alone. The unfamiliarly early darkness made him doubtful, or the old men whose suggestion of ghosts he had mocked, or maybe he was tired. It was not fear but doubt; and he told himself his heart was sick and half-broken. He would not admit superstition—he had seen too much of that. Emma had said he was restless, he was always that in new places. He felt stupid; something he had known since childhood he had now forgotten, and he believed the reminder of this knowledge, something to animate the thought that slumbered on a ledge in his mind—but it lay hidden—was in this house.
    Just like the rat. That hurrying rat in the African bungalow, at the Yellow Fever Camp. Seeing it enter the kitchen he had stamped, and the rat had scuttled into the pantry. Munday had yelled for the cook and together they cornered it. But the terrified thing had leaped at his legs, and fear made Munday recoil when he should have kicked out. Then the rat was past him, in the hall, under the bookcase, in the bedroom, the study, cowering and scampering wildly when it was threatened with the cook’s broom. Munday was separated from the cook; the rat shot along the passage, skidding on the waxed floor, and into the living room. The cook shrieked, and when Munday entered the room the cook told him the rat had run into the garden. But Munday had not seen it go, and long after, even on the sunniest day, he could not make himself believe that the rat had gone as the cook said. He