Читать книгу When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead. A Thrilling Detective Story онлайн

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“Of Mrs. Stavanger you will already have formed your opinion. The eldest daughter is a conglomeration of both parents, with some of their defects slightly accentuated. The son I need not describe to you, you saw him at the trial. But Fanny has told me that of late he has been very unsteady, and that he and his father have quarrelled a good deal. My pupil has also much to say about Wear, the parlour maid.

“‘I never saw anybody change so,’ observed the child. ‘Wear used to be so respectful, until those nasty thieves got into the shop, and nearly ruined papa and his partners. Since then she is impertinent all day long, and says such queer things. I can’t imagine why she isn’t packed off about her business. But when Ada told her the other day that she would put up with her impudence no longer, Wear just laughed in her face, and said that it would take a cleverer body than Ada to turn her out of this house now.’

“I made no comments to Fanny on this information. But I feel sure of one thing. Wear has become possessed of some power over the Stavangers, of which she is making a very injudicious use, since it would pay her in the end much better to keep a civil tongue in her head, and merely to insist upon more liberal wages, instead of showing others that there is ground for suspicion. When once the source of her sudden accession of power over the Stavangers is discovered that power will irrevocably leave her. Coupling Fanny’s remarks about ‘those nasty thieves’ with our own previously-formed opinion respecting the actual culprit in whose place Harley has been condemned and Wear’s peculiar behaviour, the inference that we are on the right track is obvious. With God’s help, we shall yet be able to rescue Harley from his horrible fate. I wonder if you will think me wicked when I confess that I long for the time when his betrayers will be suffering the agony that has been meted out to him. Tell Hilton to hold himself in readiness for action at any moment, for I am sure that I am on the eve of further discoveries.”