“Let me come and get warm a minute. I’m wheezing again, and my room’s cold as a tomb. Don’t mind me—all I want is to set before the fire for a spell.”
He sidled in before the permission was granted and sank down in the armchair, hitching it nearer to the grate. He was a man to whom intoxication lent a curiously amiable and humorous quality. The ugliness and evil that were so evidently part of his nature were not so apparent, and he became cheerful, almost genial.
Sitting close to the fire, he held out his hands to the blaze, then, stealing a look at Essex over his shoulder, saw that he was refilling his pipe.
“Be’n to the funeral?” he said.
Essex grunted an assent.
“The family there?”
“None of the ladies; only Win Shackleton.”
Harney was silent; then, with the greatest care, he took up a piece of coal and set it on the fire. The action required all the ingenuity of which he was master. His body responded to his intoxication, while, save for an unusual fluency of speech, his mind appeared to remain unaffected. After he had set the coal in place he looked again at Essex, who was staring vacantly at him, thinking of the second part of his article.
“Did you notice a tall, fine-looking young lady there with dark red hair?” said Harney, without removing his glassy gaze from the man at the table.
Essex did not move his eyes, but their absent fixity suddenly seemed to snap into a change of focus betokening attention. Gazing at Harney, he answered coldly: