Bertram Atkey

“ There, with Crandall’s mother, Raxenfeld left her. Of his own love he spoke no more then—for it was not fitting. But the months are passing smoothly, and from her letters, Raxenfeld knows that the first shock of grief has given way to regret less poignant. And he waits patiently, with the calm patience that only a big-souled and strong man possesses—until the time comes for him to go to her and take her. It will come; he knows it, and Katherine Renny is slowly, slowly beginning to realize it also. Soon she will see that she can love Raxenfeld without disloyalty to the dead Crandall. ”

“ I am too innocent, too trusting. Yes, I am too credulous. And yet it was clever to use Lullaby as a mask—an excuse. I believed it! But really they are using me as a decoy for Cyril Fitzmedley. I felt somehow that Major and Mrs. Mountarden were pouncing on me with great, soft, velvety paws—tigers' paws! They knew Cyril's feelings towards me the moment he gave me Lullaby. Well, they chose the weapons. They can hardly blame me—an orphan, almost one and nearly friendless in the world—if I fight them with the sort of weapons they use themselves. ”

“ Had I been in command of the ship there would have been no wreck, no fear, no death. I knew. It was so obvious. The folly of it—the gross, criminal folly.” He wrung his iron-stained hands, and rocked to and fro. “The man was a coward—it was in his eyes, his mouth, his chin, the movement of his eyebrows, his hands.” He seemed to catch sight of me for the first time.
“The most obvious type in the world is the cowardly type,” he said. “Like the man Macklan—a slender, prying man, who used to laugh unnecessarily when the other men in the fo'c'sle saw nothing to laugh at.” ”

“ Eleanor, standing in the hall, looking through drizzle that was like a falling network of gold thread in the light, saw Aire's white face sink back in the gloom of the interior of the car, and it came to her with a pang that so the white face of a man drowning in dark waters at night might look to one at the moment of sinking. She had not spoken to Aire, nor he to her, since the coming of the doctor.
The engine of the car, under the urge of the self-starter, woke to life with a rushing energy. ”

“ Salaman, instant, even anxious, as usual, to discover offense, thrust his fierce face close to that of Mr. Sover.
“I am Salaman Chayne—remember that. And I allow no man to be insolent with me. Remember that, also, Sover. I am engaged at present in aiding the law to run down an employer of yours—a man called Dragour.”
The flush on the jockey's thin face died down suddenly, and his eyes grew hard and watchful.
“Dragour!” repeated Mr. Chayne softly, his eyes fast on his man. “Between whom and the Countess of Barford you acted as go-between—jackal—in the matter of the Barford carved rubies.” ”

“ And now it is Summer and the forest is glorious in cloth-of-gold of the gorse, royal purple of heather, emerald fern and cool green of pine.
And Torrance and his wife return from Italy to-morrow. They will not live at No-Man’s Court but at a place with gentler memories which Torrance has bought in the forest. And if ever they ride out toward the bungalow and the old Court they will not encounter that grim, turfless patch to awaken in their minds that which is better forgotten. Gray old Gregg has seen to that—he has returfed it so carefully that it is impossible to tell the new from the old. ”

“ You don't need to be afraid I've paid you too much for this concession.” He smiled, a dry little smile. “It will pay me hundreds of thousands sterling. Fats are like wheat—vital. That's the joker. They call me the Lard Czar—but lard's only a branch of the business. All fats interest me. All I want is the fatty base—and I don't care whether it comes off a tree, or off a hog, out of the ground or out of the sea—I don't care whether it grows foliage, fur, fins or feathers: I can make anything you like of it, from pure full-cream dairy butter, right down to cart-grease—including explosives.” ”

“ It was a deadly and soundless place of gloom and miasma in one of the great forests of Borneo, and there was mystery there also—as though evil things watched from behind the liana-choked and monstrously gnarled trees, to see what the white man would do. And the orchid bloomed under the man’s hand like a pale, wide-open purple-spotted mouth—a bloom with a bizarre and poisonous beauty. The low, reedy note of a lonely bird came piping out thinly from the dimness of the swamp, and for a moment the orchid-hunter hesitated. ”

“ The man who had coughed sat upon a bowlder at the foot of the cliff. He was old, I fancied, but his beard was a sort of greasy purplish red. Those who have seen the earth about an iron mine will know the color. His hair was of the same hue, and it fell down over his ear in straight, lank locks—like the tails of eels. There was a gloss to it, I remember—a red, oily gloss. His eyes were quite black, and I do not desire to see again a face so unutterably white as this man's face was. He wore clothes—I was unreasonably surprised at this—and they, too, were red with the redness of iron ore. ”

“ But, in any case, an hour with Bryce would prove whether it was worth while.
Her gaze turned to the wife, and the light of her resolve wavered and dimmed a little. Was this woman, this untidy, slatternly, narrow-faced, bloodless woman, capable of going up with her husband? She wondered. In her heart she knew that she was not. But also she knew that almost every woman has in her a strange reserve of spiritual strength and tenacity, though many live their whole lives through without drawing upon it
Mrs. Aire might have it. ”

“ Winnie liked George H. Jay—in the sense that she did not dislike him—but she saw no reason to admit him more than about a sixteenth of an inch into her secrets, and it was to the glimpse of the envelope and the red sealing wax that she had trusted to clinch the doubts of Major Mountarden. Mr. Jay slowly tore up the blank sheet.
"Queer!" he mused. "Queer, that!" He shrugged his shoulders. "Impulsive as a bird—probably tore a sheet in two and put the wrong half in the envelope. Yes, impulsive as a kitten—and prettier." He scowled at the Maison Mountarden. ”