Читать книгу The Ostrekoff Jewels онлайн

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The fire was roaring in the stove. Haven turned over in the bed. He felt the belt around his body, he patted the satchel chained to his wrist.

"I suppose you know best," he muttered drowsily and slept once more.

Haven awoke from an aftermath of sleep, marvellously refreshed and acutely aware of two strange happenings. The one was a positive blaze of sunshine, filling the crude, but stately apartment in which he lay with soft and almost unnatural illumination, and the other was the distinct crack of a rifle which seemed to him to come from immediately below his window. He slipped from his bed and peered out. Some forty yards away, from the centre of a circle of what, in the summer time, might have been turf, a youth in the costume of a Russian peasant, but wearing a grey military overcoat, was crawling on all fours. Under the trees of the avenue a little gathering of men were moving restlessly to and fro, talking and arguing together. Presently one of them emerged with a white handkerchief tied to the end of a stick. He paused to speak to his comrade, who was now limping back to shelter, and helped him for a few yards in his progress. Then he approached the house, waving his white flag vigorously, and came to a standstill about a dozen yards from the front door.