Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/165

 The little man was near to him. He put his hand on his knee.

"They are fine, eh? They know you, recognise you. They are alive, eh?"

"Yes," said Harkness, smiling. "They are the most friendly things in art."

The door opened and one of the Japanese servants came in with liqueurs. They were put on the table close to Harkness, and soon he was drinking the most wonderful brandy that it had ever been his happy fortune to encounter.

He was warm, cosy, quite unalarmed. The prints smiled at him, the dim room received him as a friend.

Crispin was talking, leaning back now from the table, his fat body hugged up like a cushion into his chair.

His red hair stood, flaming, on end. Harkness was, at first, only vaguely conscious that Crispin was speaking, then the words began to gather about him, to force their way in upon his brain; then, as the monologue continued, his comfort, his cosiness, his sense of security slowly slipped from him. His eyes passed from the "Two Horses" to the high sharp cliffs of the "Orvieto," to the thick naked Hercules of the Aldegrever. Then, he was aware that he was frightened, as he had been on the road, in the hotel, in the car. Then, with a flash of awareness, like the sharp contact with unexpected steel,