Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/23

 The seat was at least black. You would not have noticed the dirt. Or if they must decorate, why did they not wash the decorations from time to time?

Mr. Winnery was a bachelor and wore yellow gloves to keep microbes from his plump pink hands.

Fifty-two years of bachelordom had induced a certain inflexible routine into his manner of living. For at least twenty years he had lived in the same rooms, eaten the same food, risen and gone to bed at the same hours, always found his cigarettes in the same spot and his books where he had last put them down. He had sent off his querulous book reviews and his fashionable correspondence to the Ladies' Own World at exactly the same day by exactly the same post. On Thursdays he went to the Principessa Bologna's, on Mondays to Mrs. Whitehead's, and on Wednesdays to the Marchesa Barducci's.

Today he had shattered the routine for the first time in order to torture himself with the long drive to Mrs. Weatherby's villa. When he had gone more than half-way he told himself that he had simply gone insane with heat and boredom; but having already suffered a really colossal discomfort it did not seem worth while to turn back. In the cool of the evening the journey would be an easier one. At least it could not be more uncomfortable.

The only concrete reason he could discover for the temporary outburst of insanity was a desire to know something of Miss Annie Spragg, and Mrs. Weatherby appeared to be the only person in all