Page 82 - the-thirty-nine-steps

the light much longer.’
He rang a bell, and a third servant appeared from the
veranda.
‘I want the Lanchester in five minutes,’ he said. ‘There
will be three to luncheon.’
Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest
ordeal of all.
There was something weird and devilish in those eyes,
cold, malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly clever. They
fascinated me like the bright eyes of a snake. I had a strong
impulse to throw myself on his mercy and offer to join his
side, and if you consider the way I felt about the whole thing
you will see that that impulse must have been purely physi-
cal, the weakness of a brain mesmerized and mastered by
a stronger spirit. But I managed to stick it out and even to
grin.
‘You’ll know me next time, guv’nor,’ I said.
‘Karl,’ he spoke in German to one of the men in the door-
way, ‘you will put this fellow in the storeroom till I return,
and you will be answerable to me for his keeping.’
I was marched out of the room with a pistol at each ear.
The storeroom was a damp chamber in what had been
the old farmhouse. There was no carpet on the uneven floor,
and nothing to sit down on but a school form. It was black
as pitch, for the windows were heavily shuttered. I made out
by groping that the walls were lined with boxes and bar-
rels and sacks of some heavy stuff. The whole place smelt of
mould and disuse. My gaolers turned the key in the door,
and I could hear them shifting their feet as they stood on

82 The Thirty-Nine Steps