Page:Henry rideout--The siamese cat.djvu/176

 columns of the verandah, a few slim, vermilion shafts of sealing-wax palm, and, on the trees that gave their name to the villa, broad burgeonings of arterial red.

He waited a long time. The sepulchral air of the room, the dead silence marked by the tiny scratchings of lizards on the plaster, disquieted him strangely. "Aunt Julia takes her time," he thought. The more his eye-sight cleared in the dusk, the less inviting loomed his surroundings. The few draperies lighted by the dim glow, took on a tawdry look; the knick-knacks were common Japanese bazaar stuff; and the scragged plants stood in Chinese pots of the cheapest ware. From the table he caught up a paper to flap as a fan. The frontispiece looked familiar; the heading … it was a Graphic nearly two years old.

Misgivings seized him: something was wrong with this house. His watch showed that he had