Close to his heart there was something that was wild, fierce,
savage. An involuntary shiver ran over him and seemed to dispel the
strange fancy as suddenly as it had come. He met the other's eye with a
smile, the counterpart of which in his heart was vivid horror.
"It _is_ a special occasion," he said, as naturally as possible, "and,
allow me to add, very special whisky."
Garvey appeared delighted. He was in the middle of a devious tale
describing how the whisky came originally into his possession when the
door opened behind them and a grating voice announced that dinner was
ready. They followed the cassocked form of Marx across the dirty hall,
lit only by the shaft of light that followed them from the library door,
and entered a small room where a single lamp stood upon a table laid for
dinner. The walls were destitute of pictures, and the windows had
Venetian blinds without curtains. There was no fire in the grate, and
when the men sat down facing each other Shorthouse noticed that, while
his own cover was laid with its due proportion of glasses and cutlery,
his companion had nothing before him but a soup plate, without fork,
knife, or spoon beside it.
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