Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/224

214 least to English eyes, but it was pleasantly cool after the drawing-room.

She walked across to the window, and, drawing aside the muslin curtains, looked out.

Beyond the patch of shade thrown by the house the sun beat down on a ragged, unkempt lawn, but across the lawn she noticed, much more particularly than she had done on the two former occasions when she had been in the house, that there lay a thick grove of chestnut trees just beyond the grounds of the Châlet des Muguets.

A hedge separated the lawn from the wood, but like everything else in the little property it had been neglected, and there were large gaps in it.

She turned away from the window

Yes, there, at last, was what she had come into this room to seek! Close to the broad, low bed was a writing-table, or, rather, a deal table, covered with a turkey red cloth, on which lay a large sheet of ink-stained, white blotting-paper.

Flanking the blotting-paper was a pile of Monsieur Wachner's little red books—the books in which he so carefully noted the turns of the game at the Casino, and which served him as the basis of his elaborate gambling "systems."

Sylvia went up to the writing-table, and, bending over it, began looking for some notepaper. But there was nothing of the sort to be seen; neither paper nor envelopes lay on the table.

This was the more absurd, as there were several pens, and an inkpot filled to the brim.

She told herself that the only thing to do was to tear