"I can make it out now. That is it, Devlin. A peculiar name, Fanny."
"Everything about him is that, sir, and worse."
"Had it been a common name, I daresay I should have made it out at once. Now, Fanny, who is this Devlin?"
"You called him a man, sir," said Mrs. Lemon, striving unsuccessfully to keep her eyes from the portrait of her husband, from the evil-beaked bird, and from the image of the stone monster on the mantelshelf.
The magnetism was not in her, it was in the objects, and as she turned from one to the other I also turned--as though I were a piece of machinery and she was setting me in motion. But it is likely that my eyes would have wandered in those directions without her silent prompting. One peculiarity of the fascination--growing more horrible every moment--exercised by the three objects, was that I could not look upon the one without being compelled to complete the triangle formed by the positions in which they were placed--the wall, the window, the mantelshelf.
"It was Devlin, then," I said, "who painted the portraits and stuffed the bird and gave you the stone monster?"
"You've guessed it, sir. It was him."
Referring to the entry in the memorandum-book, I asked, "Did this Devlin call for your husband on the Thursday morning that they went out together?"
"No, sir, he lodged here."
"Does he lodge here now?"