“My dear Alice, it’s your innocence that speaks there. All life is a frantic struggle to paint a rosy veneer over the ugly realities. Why not be honest with yourself? Everything in this world is stinking rotten; worse than that, a bore. Hardly worth living, in any impartial analysis. But if you have to live, you may as well live in surroundings consistent with the rottenness of everything.”
The old attorney stirred beside Alice, where he was buried in his greatcoat. “You’re quite a philosopher, Doctor,” he snarled.
“I’m an honest man.”
“Do you know, Doctor,” murmured Ellery, despite himself, “you’re beginning to annoy me.”
The fat man glanced at him. Then he said: “And do you agree with this mysterious friend of yours, Thorne?”
“I believe,” snapped Thorne, “that there is a platitude extant which says that actions speak with considerably more volume than words. I haven’t shaved for six days, and today has been the first time I left Sylvester Mayhew’s house since his funeral.”
“Mr. Thorne!” cried Alice, turning to him. “Why?”
The lawyer muttered: “I’m sorry, Miss Mayhew. All in good time, in good time.”
“You wrong us all,” smiled Dr. Reinach, deftly skirting a deep rut in the road. “And I’m afraid you’re giving my niece quite the most erroneous impression of her family. We’re odd, no doubt, and our blood is presumably turning sour after so many generations of cold storage; but then don’t the finest vintages come from the deepest cellars? You’ve only to glance at Alice to see my point. Such vital loveliness could only have been produced by an old family.”
“My mother,” said Alice, with a faint loathing in her glance, “had something to do with that, Uncle Herbert.”