“I say,” Hilary said, “I shut the sitting-room door when I came out. Mr. Brown must have opened it. The draught is from there.”
“He must have opened the window too,” Margaret said. “This is the breeze.”
“The window was shut when I left the room.”
“Perhaps it blew open,” Margaret said. “It sometimes does if the catch be not pushed home.”
“The catch was pushed home.”
Hilary picked up the two little handbags from the ledge, thinking that this Mr. Brown had a pretty cool cheek to go opening people’s windows and making their lamps smoke. He walked along to the sitting-room door, carrying the bags; Margaret was just behind him. He pushed the door open and came well into the room. A gush of air blew past him on the instant, for the window opening into the verandah was wide open. “Come in, quick, and close the door, Margarita,” he said. “This window’s wide open.” Margarita closed the door to save the hall lamp; they were thus both within the room.
Hilary saw at a glance that Mr. Brown had not only opened the window, but had moved the lamp to the corner near the fire-place. “He has a pretty cool cheek,” he thought again.
Mr. Brown was standing near the open window, facing them, with his hands behind his back.
“Come in, Mr. Kingsborough,” Mr. Brown said. “I see you have done your packing, so we can start right away.”
Hilary felt quickly that there was something wrong and deadly. There was that rasp in Mr. Brown’s voice and that snap upon his mouth; and besides these things, he stood still, and there was something in his last five words which sounded like a signal, and thirty years seemed to fall from him.