Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/130

 thing almost obscene, you know, almost as though he were hypnotized, the way he obeyed him, listened to his voice, slaved away for him."

"I noticed something of that myself this evening," said Harkness.

"You couldn't help it if you saw them together. Somehow the son turning up beside the father made the father look queer—as though the son showed him up. People round Milton are not very perceptive, you know, but they soon smelt a rat, several rats in fact. For one thing the people in the village didn't like the Jap servants, then one or two maids that Crispin had hired abruptly left. They wouldn't say anything except that they didn't like the place, that old Crispin walked in his sleep or something of the kind.

"It was just about this time, early in October or so, that Crispin became friendly with the Tobins. Young Crispin had a cold or something and Tobin came up and doctored him. Crispin gave him the best liquor he'd ever had in his life so he came again and then again. That was the beginning of my dislike of Crispin. It seemed to me rotten of him, when Tobin was already going as fast downhill as he could, to give him an extra push. And Crispin liked doing that. One could see it at a glance. I hated him from the moment when I caught him watching with amused smiles Tobin fuddled in his chair. You can imagine that Tobin's