Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/107

Rh "They looks foolish-like, rather than terrified, or—or hurt," said Bunting wonderingly.

He was extraordinarily moved and fascinated by those dumb, staring faces.

But young Chandler exclaimed in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice, "Well, a man would look foolish at such a time as that, with all his plans brought to naught—and knowing he’s only got a second to live—now wouldn’t he?"

"Yes, I suppose he would," said Bunting slowly.

Daisy had gone a little pale. The sinister, breathless atmosphere of the place was beginning to tell on her. She now began to understand that the shabby little objects lying there in the glass case close to her were each and all links in the chain of evidence which, in almost every case, had brought some guilty man or woman to the gallows.

"We had a yellow gentleman here the other day," observed the guardian suddenly; "one of those Brahmins—so they calls themselves. Well, you’d ’a been quite surprised to see how that heathen took on! He declared—what was the word he used?"—he turned to Chandler.

"He said that each of these things, with the exception of the casts, mind you—queer to say, he left them out—exuded evil, that was the word he used! Exuded—squeezed out it means. He said that being here made him feel very bad. And ’twasn’t all nonsense either. He turned quite green under his yellow skin, and we had to shove him out quick. He didn’t feel better till he’d got right to the other end of the passage!"