Dark Entries

The small dining-room was oval with a ceiling which, though probably flat, was painted, after the manner of Biagio Rebecca, to appear steeply concave.

The Coffee Room was so low that Gerald had to dip beneath a sequence of thick beams. “Why ‘Coffee Room’?” asked Phrynne, looking at the words on the door. “I saw a notice that coffee will only be served in the lounge.” “It’s the lucus a non lucendo principle.”

You may consider yourself to be dangerously ill; far more so than if you had a more conventional disease. Unless you meet this woman again and get to know her and masticate her and bite upon her and fully digest and eliminate her, you will be unlikely to recover. It is a rare disease you have; and fatal unless it is permitted to run its full course

Nothing further was said for several minutes. Gerald was beginning to realise that they had yet to evolve a holiday routine.

Not, of course, that he was able to sleep deeply or unbrokenly. Tired as he was, he slept as all must sleep upon such an unwelcoming couch. Many times he woke, with varying degrees of completeness: sometimes it was a mere half-conscious adjustment of his limbs; twice or thrice a plunging start into full vitality (he noticed that the wind had began

been placed in hiding from the world. Carfax had visited Compton Wynyates and marvelled there at the faintly similar effect to that now before him;

“We’ll just go straight on,” said Phrynne. “Until we find it.” Left to himself, Gerald would have been less keen. The stones were very large and very slippery, and his eyes did not seem to be becoming accustomed to the dark.

It was in German, a language he had studied for Foreign Office purposes, but, like all the other subjects he had mastered for that reason, had never since used.

Pots of money too.” “What makes you think that, Dudley?” asked the marzipan voice of Mr. Appleby. Conversation about Mrs. Pagani was now general. “Couldn’t behave as she does if she hadn’t, Mr. Appleby,” replied Dudley.