course—but these meetings do take place, and the fact that they were both wearing soft hats and burberries is not astonishing on a dark, wet day.
“And then there is the photograph. No doubt the original mistake was the photographer’s, but I shouldn’t be surprised if Richard welcomed it and chose that particular print on that account. Though that would mean, of course, that he knew about the wrong-sidedness of Robert. I don’t know how he could have done that, but he may have had opportunities for inquiry. It was known in the Army, and the rumours may have got round. But I won’t press that point.
“There’s one rather queer thing, and that is that Robert should have had that dream about strangling, on the very night, as far as one could make out, that Richard was engaged in doing away with Jessie Haynes. They say that similar twins are always in close sympathy with one another—that each knows what the other is thinking about, for instance, and contracts the same illness on the same day and all that. Richard was the stronger twin of the two, and perhaps he dominated Robert more than Robert did him. I’m sure I don’t know. Daresay it’s all bosh. The point is that you’ve found him all right.”
“Yes. Once we’d got the clue there was no difficulty.”
“Well, let’s toddle round to the Cri and have one.”
Wimsey got up and set his tie to rights before the glass.
“All the same,” he said, “there’s something queer about mirrors. Uncanny, a bit, don’t you think so?”
THE INCREDIBLE ELOPEMENT OF LORD PETER WIMSEY
“T HAT HOUSE, SEÑOR?” SAID the landlord of the little posada. “That is the house of the American physician, whose wife, may the blessed saints preserve us, is bewitched.” He crossed himself, and so did his wife and daughter.
“Bewitched, is she?” said Langley sympathetically. He was a professor of ethnology, and this was not his first visit to the Pyrenees. He had, however, never before penetrated to any place quite so remote as this tiny hamlet, clinging, like a rock-plant, high up the scarred granite shoulders of the mountain. He scented material here for his book on Basque folk-lore. With tact, he might persuade the old man to tell his story.
“And in what manner,” he asked, “is the lady be-spelled?”
“Who knows?” replied the landlord, shrugging his shoulders. “‘The man that asked questions on Friday was buried on Saturday.’ Will your honour consent to take his supper?”
Langley took the hint. To press the question would be to encounter obstinate silence. Later, when they knew him better, perhaps—
His dinner was served to him at the family table—the oily, pepper-flavoured stew to which he was so well accustomed, and the harsh red wine of the country. His hosts chattered to him freely enough in that strange Basque language which has no fellow in the world, and is said by some to be the very speech of our first fathers in Paradise. They spoke of the bad winter, and young Esteban Arramandy, so strong and swift at the pelota, who had been lamed by a falling rock and now halted on two sticks; of three valuable goats carried off by a bear; of the torrential rains that, after a dry summer, had scoured the bare ribs of the mountains. It was raining now, and the wind was howling unpleasantly. This did not trouble Langley; he knew and loved this haunted and impenetrable country at all times and seasons. Sitting in that rude peasant inn, he thought of the oak-panelled hall of his Cambridge college and smiled, and his eyes gleamed happily behind his scholarly pince-nez. He was a young man, in spite of his professorship and the string of letters after his name. To his university colleagues it seemed strange that this man, so trim, so prim, so early old, should spend his vacations eating garlic, and scrambling on mule-back along precipitous mountain-tracks. You would never think it, they said, to look at him.
There was a knock at the door.
“That is
Elmore - Carl Webster 03 Leonard