Page:Quiller-Couch - Noughts and Crosses.djvu/51

Rh knowledge in his face. I felt that I must kill him sooner or later, and the sooner the better.

Presently he laid down his flute again and spoke:—

"I scarcely expected you."

I grunted something in answer.

"But I might have known something was up, if I'd only paid attention to my flute. It and I are not in harmony to-night. It doesn't like the secrets I've been blowing into it; it has heard a lot of queer things in its time, but it's an innocent-minded flute for all that, and I'm afraid that what I've told it to-night is a point beyond what it's prepared to go."

"I take it, it knows a damned deal too much," growled I.

He looked at me sharply for an instant, rose, whistled a bar or two of "Like Hermit Poor," reached down a couple of clay pipes from the shelf, filled one for himself, and gravely handed the other with the tobacco to me.

"Beyond what it is prepared to go," he echoed quietly, sinking back in his chair and