The Coat of Arms by Edgar Wallace

Author:Edgar Wallace [Wallace, Edgar]
Format: epub
Tags: Crime/Mystery, Novels
ISBN: 9780755114795
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2008-06-14T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Ten minutes later Keller, standing at his door, called loudly for a waiter, and Charles went up to him and, coming back, drew a bottle of brandy from the bar.

"That fellow can put it away," he said, and was peremptorily snubbed.

"Look after your own business. If he puts it away, as you call it, he'll pay for it. When you've given him that, go and find Mrs. Harris; I want her to attend to the bar."

Mrs. Harris came complainingly. She had been on her feet all day, and they were very tired feet. Yet she could summon up interest in the care of the bar. In the days of her youth she had been a barmaid at one of Spiers and Ponds' railway restaurants. She had in her life been everything except a soldier: that was rather a standing jest than a boast.

Rennett, returning later, found her in the little cubby-hole with its backing of mirrors and bottles, and demanded a cigar. He was an old acquaintance of Mrs. Harris; she was one of the few people he had met in England who had excited his sympathy, and one of the very few people in the world who were capable of amusing him.

He lounged up to the bar and selected a cigar from the box which she handed to him.

"This village is like a morgue after nine," he said.

Mrs. Harris was puzzled, until he explained just what a morgue was, and then she was in complete agreement with him. She had a Cockney's contempt for rural practices.

"They go to bed very early, and they're up in the morning before the cows come out," she said.

She saw him looking up, and thought he was admiring the beamed roof.

"Nice old-fashioned house, ain't it? You can't walk down a passage without banging your head against a beam—it's so artistic."

She volunteered a great deal of information which was no information to Captain Rennett, and the talk drifted to the old man. Here she was voluble but contemptuous. Nothing frightened Mrs. Harris except the proximity of the insane asylum, and she admitted that she could not pass that establishment at night without her heart coming into her mouth. Rennett smiled grimly. For his part, he could not pass an insane asylum without his heart breaking.

The return of Lorney put an end to the confidences. John Lorney was unusually brusque to-night; more of a "bear", according to Mrs. Harris, than she could remember for some time, Even Rennett found it difficult to make conversation with him. He remarked upon the dullness of the village at night.

"Yes, it's pretty quiet here." Lorney looked at him oddly. "But we can't give you a fire every night, you know."

Rennett smiled.

"I missed that."

"Did you? Quite a lot of people think they saw you there."

"I was in London," he said.

The landlord of the "Coat of Arms" signalled Mrs. Harris that he had no need of her company at the moment, and she went, grumbling under her breath, resenting the curtailment of her rights as an audience.

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