“Used to be a picture over there, didn’t there?” Brent drawled. “You can see a kind of square where the smoke didn’t get.”
“You don’t miss much, do you, Brent?” I laughed.
“I have an inquiring mind,” said he in his funny way.
“Well, so you won’t lose any sleep over it,” Tom laughed, “a painting of Mr. McClintick hung there.” I am always amused at the contrast between Tom’s briskness and Brent’s drawling half interest in everything. “When we got word that he had been murdered we took it down and laid it away in one of the rooms up there,” he added, indicating the balcony.
“I didn’t think you and your little circle were that sentimental,” Brent drawled. “Maybe I should say susceptible. What was it—a picture of the old geezer?”
“The old gentleman, yes,” said Tom. “We eat right here, you know, and there he was staring down at us all the time. We didn’t just like a murdered man to be staring down at us. Heinie said, ‘It remembers me of a ghost aready.’”
Brent lost interest and fell to gazing about again. Our talk drifted into other channels. Even in the lodge we could hear the distant moaning that we had heard before. The fire blazed away and crackled companionably. Even Brent had to drag himself together and withdraw a little from its increasing warmth. As he did so, he stooped to inspect what seemed to me to be but an imperfection in the cement hearth. His scrutiny seemed quite casual; there was always a kind of ludicrous snoopiness about him which I think he sometimes practised to amuse and sometimes to annoy Tom. To this day I remember saying to him, “Well, what is it—a lynx or a jaguar?”
“It’s a human footprint,” he said.
“I doubt it,” said Tom.
“Somebody must have stepped in the cement before it was dry,” Brent observed. “His foot went over the edge.”