E. W. Hornung

Name: Witching Hill — The Locked Room
Author: E. W. Hornung

Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

Summary

“Witching Hill — The Locked Room”, published in 1913, is a work by E. W. Hornung. It explores elements such as Nettleton, Uvo and Sarah.

Quotes from Witching Hill — The Locked Room (E. W. Hornung)

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ It may have been in answer to the prayers I uttered in the end instead of curses; that is more than man can say. I only know that I was not merely calm at the last, but immensely interested in what Nettleton would have called the winning candle. It burnt down to the last thin disk of grease, shining like a worn florin in the jungle of shavings that seemed to lean upon the flame and yet did not catch. Then the wick fell over, the last quarter-inch of it, and I thought that candle had done its worst. Head and heart almost burst with hope. No! ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ When I shouted he gave me leave to go on till I was black in the face; nobody would hear me through the front of the house, and perhaps I remembered the heavy shutters he had made for the French windows at the time of the burglar scare? He went round to see if he could hear me through them, and he came back rubbing his hands. But now I took no more notice of his taunts. The last and cruellest was at the very flecks of blood on floor and shavings, flung far as froth in my demented efforts to tear either my foot from the trap or myself limb from limb.... ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ I like to think that one always must if there is time. There was time, and to spare, in my case. And there were those four calm candles waiting for me to behave myself, burning away as though they had never been out, one almost down to the shavings now, all four in their last half-inch, yet without another flicker between them of irresolution or remorse, true ecclesiastical candles to the end! ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ Altogether it was not in my allowance of human nature to lose such an opportunity of showing him his new friend in his true colours.
"He is clever," whispered Uvo, as though that was the bond between them. "He knows something about everything, and he's a wonderful carpenter and mechanic. You must really see the burglar-trap that he concocted after the scare. If another Cheffins paid him a visit, he'd put his foot in it with a vengeance."
"It would be six of one and very nearly half a dozen of the other," said I with hardihood. "Set a Nettleton to catch a Cheffins, as you might say, Uvo!" ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ But my eyes were rooted in horror to the floor. It also was bare, in the sense that there was no carpet, though a rug or two had been roughly folded and piled on the carpenter's bench. In their place, from skirting-board to skirting-board, the floor was ankle-deep in shavings. And among the shavings, like so many lighthouses in a yellow sea, burnt four or five fat ecclesiastical candles. They were not in candlesticks; at first I thought that they were mounted merely in their own grease. But Nettleton had run no such risk of one toppling before its time. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ There's no vice in old Nettleton, let alone crime; but there's a chuckle-headed irresponsibility that might almost let him in for either before he knew it. He never does seem to know what he's doing, and I'm sure he never worries about anything he's once done. If he did, he'd have gone further afield from the scene of his downfall, or else taken rooms in town instead of a red elephant of a house that he evidently can't afford. As a tenant, I quite agree that he is hopeless."
"If only he hadn't come here!" I grumbled. "What on earth can have brought him to Witching Hill, of all places?" ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ I exclaimed, as it struck me for the first time: "the man you describe is not the man to trust with all those morbid superstitions of yours! I know he enters into them, because you told me he did, and I know how much you wanted to find some one who would. But so much the worse for you both, if he's the kind you say he is. An idle man, too, and apparently alone in the world! I don't envy you if Nettleton really does come under the influence of your old man of the soil, and plays down to him!"
"My dear Gilly, this is a great concession," whispered Uvo, on his elbow with surprise. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ I prevailed by undertaking to do any mortal thing he liked, as long as he lay where he was with that quinsy.
"Then save the fellow somehow, Gilly," he cried, "only don't you go near Nettleton to-night! He obviously isn't safe; take the other risk instead. Since the old soul's out of the house, let him set fire to it if he likes; that's better than his murdering you on the spot. Then we must get him quietly examined, without letting him know that we know anything at all; and if a private attendant's all he wants, I swear I'm his man. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ You go mad and commit a murder, but you're dead sane when they hang you! That seems to me about the toughest luck a man could have, but it looks very like being your own."
"Which of these four candles do you back to win?" inquired Nettleton, looking at them and not at me. "I put my money on the one nearest you, and I back this one here for a place."
"Two people know all about this, I may tell you," said I with more effect. Nettleton looked up. "Uvo Delavoye's one, and your old Sarah's the other." ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ It isn't everybody who can think the things you do, Uvo, and never look like doing 'em!"
"I don't agree with you a bit, Gilly. I never believe those blithering blighters who attribute their crimes to the bad example of some criminal hero of the magazines or of the stage. Villain-worship doesn't carry you to that length unless you're a bit of a villain in the first instance."
"But suppose you are?" I argued, almost before I saw the point that I was making. "Suppose you have as few scruples, principles, 'pangs and fears'—call them what you like—as this fellow Nettleton. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ He blames me for ever having truck with such a fellow in the first instance. But when a man has been science beak in a public school—and such a school—it sounds good enough for Witching Hill, doesn't it? Who would have thought he'd had the sack? Public-school masters don't often get it."
"They've got to do something pretty desperate first, I fancy," whispered Uvo, with a gleam in his sunken eyes. He had not denied the fact. I felt encouraged to elaborate my grievance against Edgar Nettleton. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ And Uvo Delavoye confirmed the statement.
"It wasn't such a deep sea as you thought, Gilly. But it was the spirit that saved the show, and that's just where our poor friend overshot the mark. Spirit burns itself, not the thing you put it on. It's like the brandy and the Christmas pudding. Those shavings would have been far more dangerous by themselves, but drenched in methylated spirit they burnt like a wick, which of course hardly burns at all."
"My methylated!" Sarah chimed in. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ People were beginning to talk about us as it was; a case of attempted arson, even if the incendiary were proved a criminal lunatic, might be the end of us as a flourishing concern. It is true that I had no stake in the Company whose servant I was; but one does not follow the dullest avocation for three years without taking a certain interest of another kind. At any rate I intended the secret of this locked room to remain as much a secret as I could keep it, and this gave me an immediate leverage over Sarah. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ The grotesque inadequacy of these comments, taken in conjunction with her comparative composure, made me suspect for one wild moment that Sarah herself was an accomplice in the horrible design. She grasped it at a glance, much quicker than I had done, and it seemed to shock her very much less. I snatched up one of the candles—they were pinned in place with black-headed toilet pins—and I lit the gas with it before stalking through the shavings and setting a careful foot upon the rest in turn. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ Nettleton should come back while I'm busy, keep him in conversation while I slip out through your kitchen. I don't much like my job, Sarah, but neither do I think for a moment that there's anything wrong. ”

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Source: Wikisource

E. W. Hornung, Witching Hill — The Locked Room (1913)

“ When I had extinguished the last of them, I turned to find my innocent old suspect snivelling on the threshold, and nodding her gay plume more emphatically than ever.
"'Ow awful!" she ejaculated in hushed tones. "Madness, I call it. Setting fire to a nice 'ouse like this! But there, he's been getting queer for a long time. ”

E. W. Hornung

Summary

Quotes from Witching Hill — The Locked Room (E. W. Hornung)

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