Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/104

100 that duty, and you will have to look after yourself."

He led the way upstairs, unlocked a door and passed in. There was one window which was heavily curtained. He saw her glance and nodded.

"You will find the windows barred," he said. "This was evidently the nursery and is admirably suited to my purpose. In addition, I might tell you that the house is a very old one and that it is impossible to walk about the room without the door creaking and, as I spend most of my time in the dining-room below, you will find it extremely difficult even to make preparations for escape without my being aware of the fact."

The room was comfortably furnished. A small fire was alight in the tiny grate and a table had been laid, on which were displayed sandwiches, a thermos flask and a small silver basket of confectionery.

There was a door by the big four-poster bed.

"You may consider yourself fortunate in having the only room in the house with a bath-room attached," he said. "You English people are rather particular about that kind of thing."

"And you German people aren't," she said coolly.

"German?" he laughed. "So you guessed that, did you?"

"Guessed it?"—it was her turn to laugh scornfully. "Isn't the fact self-evident? Who but a Hun"

His face went a dull red.

"That is a word you must not use to me," he said roughly—"hang your arrogance! Huns! We, who gave the world its kultur, who lead in every department of science, art and literature!"

She stared at him in amazement.

"You are joking, of course," she said, forgetting her danger for the moment in face of this extraordinary phenomenon. "If you are a German, and I suppose you are, and an educated German at that, you don't for a moment imagine you gave the world anything. Why, the Germans have never been anything but exploiters of other men's brains."