Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/31

 that the driver turned as if in expectation of an order and then saw at once that his fare was thinking of other things.

The house was placed so that it commanded a superb view of the lonely valley, a view indeed which one would never have suspected from the approach. Perhaps, he thought, it had been chosen in the beginning by some Roman for its sense of space, a thing so rare in the crowded valleys about Brinoë. At the very bottom of the valley there was a yellow line tracing the course of a freshet, now completely dry in the heat of mid-August. And suddenly he felt suffocated once more and choking with dust.

The carriage stopped before the door and Mr. Winnery, after putting on his yellow gloves and endeavoring vainly to brush the thick dust from his clothing, went up the steps and pulled a copper bell-handle made in the form of a ram's head and covered by a patine of verdigris. There was an answering tinkle of a bell, but no other evidence of life. He rang again and then again with no more success, and suddenly he was aware that the driver was looking at him with an expression of malice as if he said, "You forced me to come all the way out here in the heat for nothing." It was a perfectly blank expression, but touched with insinuation. It made Mr. Winnery suddenly angry and embarrassed. It reminded him how he detested Italians as a race. He pulled violently and the bell answered again with a mocking violence. Then he turned and saying, "Wait for me here," came down the steps