Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/54

 gleamed against the black ilex hedge. Mr. Winnery saw it again suddenly in his imagination. He saw with a remarkable clearness all its beauty and sensuality. It occurred to him that at some time in the remote past there must have been other people living here in this same ancient spot, living here and perhaps worshipping the ancient figure of Priapus—troops of harlots and courtesans and voluptuaries. And their successors had been Mrs. Weatherby and Miss Fosdick, bringing with them so much that was the essence of a country that lay beyond Atlantis, unknown and unimagined in the days when this Priapus was carved.

In order to reach the front of the villa it was necessary to pass again through the tangled green tunnel which was too low to allow the passage of the great candlestick. Miss Fosdick solved the problem by removing the candle itself and leading the way. In order not to fall in the darkness they took hands in chain fashion, first Miss Fosdick and then Winnery, then the Princess and last of all Father d'Astier. Miss Fosdick's hand was plump and soft and placid, but the hand of the Princess was thin and hard and feverish. Winnery thought it was trembling violently.

And then as they approached the other side there arose in the thick bushes very near at hand the faint sound of a scuffle and a torrent of words uttered in a soft masculine Italian and then the laugh, hot and voluptuous and almost hysterical, of a woman. For a second Mr. Winnery had the wild thought that he had overheard the ghosts of that ancient garden, and then the Princess, emerging from the hedge,