"Yes, and those idiotic crowds, and all their senseless talk. Who wants a streetful of fools gaping at his windows for two or three days on end like that? Then they started pulling his leg at the Club. So he just waited till this chap Smith was fit to be moved and then cleared out. I don't blame him."
"Yes, I can understand Esdaile's being annoyed; but that's over now, and I don't quite see why you should leave and come back here."
"Well, Audrey wasn't going there anyway," he answered. "She'd had enough of it. Got it into her head there was something uncanny about the place, and so there is. Too much mystery altogether. That was Esdaile. He keeps you on the jump the whole time."
"What do you mean by keeping you on the jump?"
"All sorts of ways. There's that cellar of his for one thing; he was never in the same mind about that for half an hour together. We were going to take a cupboard or something down there one day; it was his own suggestion; but he twisted and wriggled and tried to cry off till I was about at the end of my patience. You'd have thought he wouldn't have us down there at any price. And then suddenly he turned round and said we could go down if we liked. Idiotic I call it."
"Did you go down?"
"Yes. And there was nothing whatever to make all that fuss about as far as I could see. I admit I'd wondered once or twice whether there was anything queer, but I went into every corner and there was absolutely nothing to see."
"You're thinking of that other morning when he was down there all that time?"
"Yes. I can't make head or tail of that yet, but I can't see it's anything to do with the cellar. And just listen to this. After making all that fuss he came up again and didn't even bother to take the key out of the door. It was there when I came away. One day he nearly jumps down your throat when you ask him for the key, and the next thing he goes and leaves it in the door! I'm sure he did it on purpose too. It was just like saying, 'Go and live down there if you like.' Well, I wasn't going to be messed about like that. I'm not going nosing round other fellows' places. I'm not a policeman. So I cleared out. Would you have stopped after that?"