“Oh, you do, eh?” said the master of Griff Towers with sudden amiability. “She’s a nice little thing. Quite a cut above the ordinary chorus girl. You might bring her along to dinner one night. She’d come with you, eh?”
The contortions of the puffy eyelids suggested to Michael that the man had winked. There was something about this gross figure that interested the scientist in Michael Brixan. He was elemental; an animal invested with a brain; and yet he must be something more than that if he had held a high administrative position under Government.
“Are you acting? If you’re not, you can come up and have a look at my swords,” said the man suddenly.
Michael guessed that, for a reason of his own, probably because of his claim to be Adele’s friend, the man wished to cultivate the acquaintance.
“No, I’m not acting,” replied Michael.
And no invitation could have given him greater pleasure. Did their owner realize the fact, Michael Brixan had already made up his mind not to leave Griff Towers until he had inspected that peculiar collection.
“Yes, she’s a nice little girl.”
Penne returned to the subject immediately as they paced up the slope toward the house.
“As I say, a cut above chorus girls. Young, unsophisticated, virginal! You can have your sophisticated girls: there is no mystery to ’em! They revolt me. A girl should be like a spring flower. Give me the violet and the snowdrop: you can have a bushel of cabbage roses for one petal of the shy dears of the forest.”
Michael listened with a keen sense of nausea, and yet with an unusual interest, as the man rambled on. He said things which were sickening, monstrous. There were moments when Brixan found it difficult to keep his hands off the obscene figure that paced at his side; and only by adopting toward him the attitude with which the enthusiastic naturalist employs in his dealings with snakes, was he able to get a grip of himself.