Blythewood blew away the problem with a cloud of smoke.
“We’ve got you at last, anyhow,” he said. “And that’s nine points of the law. I’ll wager you don’t know, sir, whence your house gets its name.”
“I can’t take you. You’re right.”
“’Tis the short for Devil’s-rope,—that’s what it is; the cursed bind-weed that will honeycomb a county from an inch of root if you give it rein. The story goes that, when they dug the foundations, it lay thick in the soil as macaroni in a dish.”
“That’s odd enough; and an ominous name for the last tenant by your showing. What was his history that you make a secret of?”
“Tut! ’tis no secret. Did you hear that?—the wind ’ll blow the casement in. ’Tis no secret; but I was only a lad of five when they found him hanging on the downs, and so can give you little but the fruits of hearsay.”
“And what are they?”
“As dry as apple-johns by this date. Fill your glass. The fellow’s name was Turk, I say; and he looked his name.—Zounds! ’tis like his ghost ravenin’ with fury to get the grip of us.—He must ’a been an ugly beggar; for I can remember him plain as plain for all I was only five years old when he was found swingin’.”
“What was he like?”
“Like? Like a gurgoyle on a church—a face to sweat o’ nights with thinking on. A murderous-looking caitiff, sir, with red stubble under his jasey and a bloody long tuck at his side. Yet I can mind me of a look in his eyes—or in one of ’em; for t’other was fixed in his head and chalky like a boiled cod’s—that wasn’t all of the rest. ’Twas fear, or sufferin’—or compound of both; and it lessened the fright I stood in of meetin’ him.”