Into her own room she flitted, and bade her companion watch while she unlocked and threw open the door of a tall wooden press that stood in a recess of the chimney.
He lounged, idly looking while she revealed her treasures; and she stepped back with an expression of covert triumph on her face.
“Do you know what they are?” she said. “Name them to me, all.”
He gave an involuntary exclamation of repulsion; for verily it was a gruesome collection that met his gaze.
Many old mummified skins of bird and beast, with beak and claw still adhering to them; yellowing teeth of cattle and skulls of small-deer picked out of brake and warren; the sloughed skin of an adder; the desiccated presentment of a cat with a mouse in its jaws, found behind a stove; amongst them all, carefully arranged, a host of common pebbles, selected for some distinguishing mark, and even withered roots and potatoes, that accident had embellished with some grotesque resemblance to twisted limbs or faces—such were the principal features of Darda’s museum.
There was yet another treasure that stood prominently forward of the rest in a place of honour—a human skull—no less—with wisps of gritty hair yet clinging to the scalp, and the flesh of the face withered to a corrugated substance like bark.
The baronet gave out a note of extreme disgust. The eye-holes of the dead horror were wrinkled like a toad’s back, and one of them was bulged with a chalky lump that, gleaming through the slit, looked as if the last dying terror of the soul that once inhabited had petrified it.
Seeing his expression, the girl gave an eldritch laugh, and clipped it in the bud.
“That is Dennis,” she said, listening.
A step came up the stairway. Mr. Tuke strode into the passage without, and met the brother approaching.