Читать книгу The House of Spies онлайн

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"That's funny!" he said to himself; "it seems that the old fellow doesn't trust me. What has he to be anxious about?"

He turned and sat down in the chair in which Nance had fallen asleep.

Anthony Durrell had opened the porch door, and was whispering to the men in the porch.

"Go round to the kitchen entry. Don't make a noise. Nance has only just gone to her room."

They disappeared into the darkness, and Durrell felt his way back toward the kitchen, shutting the door that closed the passage from the hall. Entering the kitchen, he drew the heavy stuff curtains across the windows, and then let the two men in.

"Don't talk too loud. The old house is solid—but I don't want Nance to hear."

Jerome the Frenchman glanced greedily at the bread and cheese on the table, and drawing up a chair he pulled out a bottle of schnapps, and began to eat and drink. The taller man smiled, and laid his cloak and hat on a dresser. He stood six feet, held himself arrogantly, and looked down at Durrell out of a pair of hard, brown, closely set eyes. He was clean-shaven, and the skin of his face was harsh and red. His long, straight nose had a curiously drooping tip, and two deep, vertical furrows where it joined his forehead. The man had the air of an aristocrat, and the easy and contemptuous manner of one who has seen too much of life.