Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/203

Rh someone at the door. "Hullo, is this her back again?" When the door opened, however, it was M. Gerbert who came in. Mr. Kennard went and laid his hands upon his shoulders. "Gerbert, I've been having an interview with the assassin."

Mr. Kennard was six foot four and M. Gerbert was about four foot six. The difference in their size was not only a question of height Mr. Kennard was clumsily made, big and brawny. M. Gerbert's build was almost feminine. His hands and feet were as small as a woman's. He had long red hair, the ends of which strayed from under the brim of his big slouch hat—the size of the hat emphasised the diminutive proportions of its wearer. His face was white and eager, a typical French face of a certain class, all vivacity and nerves. Just now there was a look on it of painful tension, of something strained, as if a fever burned within. But then, M. Gerbert was apparently, in general, such a mere bundle of nerves that one drifted in the habit of taking it for granted that all his moods were evanescent He looked up at the Englishman towering above him.

"I do not follow you."

"I say that I've been having an interview with the assassin, with the individual, you remember, who advertised that life had become an insupportable burden."

"Ah!" M. Gerbert slipped Mr. Kennard's hands from off his shoulders. "You wrote to him?"

"I wrote to him."

"Did he turn out to be the ordinary type of bravo, or merely an invertebrate animal with suicidal tendencies?"