“I hope you are satisfied!” sneered Joaquin Santos, with a flourish of his eternal cigarette.

“I am. You don’t do murder in my house, wherever else you may do it.”

“And now better lid ‘im to the nirrest polissstation; or weel you go and tell the poliss yourself?” asked the Portuguese, in the same tone of mordant irony.

“Ay, ay,” growled Harris; “that’s the next thing!”

“No,” said Rattray; “the next thing’s for you two to leave him to me.”

“We’ll see you damned!” cried the captain.

“No, no,


412 of 585

I heard his feet clattering up some stone stairs, and in a trice he was running along the gallery overhead; in another I heard him railing behind some upper door that he had flung open and banged behind him; then his voice dropped, and finally died away. I was left some minutes in the oppressively silent


412 of 967