08 - Sinister House by Leland Hall

What is it about that old house down the road that unnerves Pierre and his wife, Annette? The owners, Eric and Julia, appear to be a lovely couple, yet an unsettling aura of malevolence surrounds them. While Eric seems to radiate a supernatural darkness wherever he goes, Julia bears mysterious injuries that hint at a deeper horror. Are Erics sinister vibes the true source of her suffering, or is there something even more terrifying lurking within the walls of their home? (Summary by Ben Tucker)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eight of Sinister House by Leland Hall. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker.
Chapter eight change my opinions, as if I wouldn't have
been glad enough to change them. Heaven knows, I wasn't
set up about having seen a ghost. Why if only

(00:21):
his telephoning to New York could have laid it and
have averted the suffering and torment of the next two nights,
I'd have recanted, I'd have denied myself. I'd have said
my name is Jones while all the time at Smith.
But of course I did not know what was in
store for all of us, and it wouldn't have done
any good even if I'd said I was Jesse James.
Believe me. I was miserable, that's all, just plain miserable

(00:44):
and sort of loco with it. However, I won't hold
up the rest of the story telling you what a
rotten night I had the next two or to make
it look like I was going to say thirty cents,
but I guess I mean like a ten dollar gold piece.
I do remember, though, that Annette was awfully anxious about me,
and since the more I tried to explain the more

(01:06):
anxious she grew. I just subsided, but we kept the
lights going until after two. I liked the lights because
while they were going, I didn't have such terrible pictures
of what Julia might be going through. It must have
had its comical side, Annette stealing an anxious look at
me every two or three minutes, I looking mournfully at her,

(01:27):
and neither of us saying much. After we put out
the lights, we both lay in our beds without moving
until about four. I heard Annette get up and go
to the window. Haven't you been asleep, dear? I whispered,
what's the matter. I can't sleep for worrying. You've frightened
the life out of me, Pierre. I don't know whether
your mind's all right or not. You sound crazy. You

(01:48):
looked wild tonight. You ought to see a doctor. And
Julia maybe she's crazy too. I don't think you ought
to go there anymore. But she needs me and you too.
She and Eric are I sprately afflicted. We mustn't go
back on them. We mustn't withhold anything of comfort or
strength to her. Don't be afraid. Let me remind you

(02:08):
that it wasn't pleasant. I cannot remember much that happened
the next day. I remember that it was fair that
the sun shone with a golden radiance in which no
ghost could survive. Giles was at breakfast with us, though
I found out later that he had not gone to
bed at all. I tried to get him to come
with my wife, the children and me, but he would
not be prevailed upon, and I dare say we had

(02:29):
a jolly or time without him. We had a picnic
somewhere in away from the river. We did not take
the highway that ran past Eric's house. It was near
a hay mow, I think, against the side of which
I slept in the warm sun for a couple of hours.
If Annette read to Bobby at all, it was from
little men, or it may have been little women. Though

(02:49):
I passed a not too melancholy day. As we started
home before sundown, I began to feel depressed. We picked
up doctor Gresham by the roadside on the way back.
He was the only physician in Foresby, and his card
broke and down out in the country. I remember we
went a mile out of our way to take him
to his house, and one or the other of us
said half seriously that he hoped there be no sickness
in the outlying parts of the community. That night arrived home,

(03:13):
Felicia told us that Missus Greer had telephoned in the
afternoon to ask us over for dinner that evening. It
was a trial. I did not want to go, and
my wife was all four telephoning a flat refusal, but
remembering the straits Julia was in, I felt it would
be nothing short of treachery to go back on her.
So Annette and I bathed, kissed the children good night,
and ran over in the ford. The night was unseasonably

(03:35):
cold and clear as crystal, but with no moon and
only a few stars, a real darkness lay over the land.
We had nothing to say to each other as we
spun along the flat highway. Eric greeted us, and we
found Giles seated before the grate in the living room,
in which there was a bright yellow fire of kennel
coal the only light in the room. We asked him
how he had spent the day, but he preferred not

(03:57):
to tell us until later. And while we were waiting
for Julia to come down, Eric led me out on
the veranda over the cliff, just to see how black
and mysterious. The river looked down in its bed. There
was no trace of twilight in the western sky, but
there was a single bright star there, and looking far below,
I could see its reflection in the invisible water. My

(04:17):
foot kicked against a stone on the veranda floor. Absent mindedly,
I picked it up and leaned over the veranda rail
let it drop from loosened fingers. The ping of its
hitting the boulders below and a faint splash were just
audible in the otherwise holy, silent night. Why was it that,
in the midst of such tranquility I had a sudden
sense of evils being done? I straightened and turned round sharply,

(04:41):
man's natural physical reaction to the spur of a sudden
unpleasant thought. Eric was just on the point of speaking.
He had actually said a word or two which I missed.
I think he meant to unburden himself of let it go.
I have no proof my sudden movement put an end
to it, anyhow, What's the matter, Pierre, he asked me quietly, Nothing,

(05:04):
I responded. The side of the house was almost blotted
out in the darkness, but looking restlessly toward the north,
I saw a faint colorless glow. It seemed to come
from a window in a bow that was built out
from the side the veranda did not run that far.
Against the uncertain light, I saw something moving, swinging slowly.
It was a shutter, and as there was hardly a

(05:26):
breath of air stirring, the movement struck me as queer
and mysterious. I called Eric's attention to it. He started
towards it, and I followed his vague form. I wonder,
He said, what is loosen to that shutter? That is
a window in the room to which Julia has taken
her strange aversion. We went to the end of the

(05:47):
veranda and he leaned out, trying to touch the shutter,
but could not reach it. There's some one in the room,
I suggested. That cannot be, He replied, the doors always locked.
You know you heard no one is allowed to go
into that room. But the light, I said, there's no light,
look for yourself. True enough, there was no longer any light.

(06:12):
Eric lit a match or two, which he held out
as far towards the window as he could reach, and
in the feeble glow of which he made out to
his own satisfaction that the bolt on the shutter had
not broken or rusted away. Julia must have sent some
one in there to day, he concluded. At that moment,
someone stepped out on the veranda from the living room.
It was Julia herself. Turning we saw her one side

(06:34):
all white and bright, the other black and invisible. She
hesitated a moment, and then came quickly towards us. Eric,
She cried, what are you doing? She had a fit
of coughing. Eric took her by the shoulders and marched
her back. Whence she had come, I'm doing nothing, he replied,
to alarm you. You are not to come out of
doors without a rap, my dear, you will have pneumonia.

(06:56):
Pierre discovered that the shudder to the forbidden room is open,
and eyes I was looking at it and wondering who
could have opened it. By that time we were going
into the house again. Julia had lighted all the candles
in the living room. It was warm and pleasant and
should have been cheerful. But turning round from latching the
window through which we had come in, I caught a
look of mingled incredulity and fear on Julia's face. No

(07:19):
one has been in that room, she was whispering to
her husband. The bolt must have rusted away. The bolt's
all right, he said, but you'll have to let me
into the place. Deer Eric, I beg of you not
to night, Not to night. I don't feel well, you know.
Humor me, dearest, promise not to night, silly girl. Not

(07:40):
to night then, or any night till you wish it.
He stooped as if to kiss her, but she turned
abruptly from him and went to chat with my wife,
and I saw his arms fall to his side in
a gesture of hopelessness. Later, while we were at dinner,
I could not keep my eyes from the blue velvet
curtain on the wall opposite me. It hung motionless, obscure

(08:00):
in the candle light, apparently without significance to at least
apart from the consciousness of the others in the room.
Only when the old servant passed it on her rounds
of service at the table did I see it stir.
But I knew there was a doubly locked door behind it,
and that in the room behind the door there was something.
Julia had caused a fear. I could not but ask

(08:20):
myself again and again who or what had opened the
shutter I could not but wonder if the swaying of
that thing I had so dimly perceived in the outdoor
darkness were not an evil omen In spite of my uneasiness,
the dinner progressed smoothly. I dare say, I ate my
share of the good hot food too, no matter what

(08:41):
my apprehensions. Well, we left the dining room, five of us,
and made our ceremonious way down the narrow rose colored
hall corridor and turned into the living room. Julia was
keen on ventilation, and she had left one of the
windows open during dinner so that the room was fresh
and cool. I can see now as she went to
close it, and as she came back to take her

(09:02):
seat on a cricket by the fire of cannel coal.
It was a pretty scene. What would the candlelight, the
dancing yellow flames in the little grate, and the dancing
side show and miniature shining from the polished rosewood of
the piano across the room, the comfortable chairs and sofas
with their bright cushions, the subdued colors of the hangings,
through many of which there ran dull threads of gold

(09:25):
that glimmered with reflected light. It was a long, narrow
room of knick knacks and luxury, of beauty, and shadow,
of softness and glow, and above all, of comfort awaiting.
I say, we left the dining room, five of us,
and came to this living room, Giles holding aside the
portier for us to pass in, but he had no
sooner let it drop behind himself, the last to enter.

(09:48):
Than I knew there were six persons in that room.
I felt it as you count on your fingers, five,
as you feel in every nerve in your body six.
Perhaps I shouldn't imply six persons, five persons and the
specter invisible until later in the evening, but present all
the time. I did not need to look over my

(10:09):
shoulder for it. I knew when it changed its place.
I knew that for some time it paid no attention
to us, but wandered aimlessly along the shadowy walls and
across the space behind us. Then it began to disturb
Julia and me, though still invisible. First, I felt a
fine but penetrating draft of cold air upon the back

(10:31):
of my neck. Searching the inlet, I left my seat
and went to the window that gave on the veranda
over the river. It was tightly fastened, and the curtains
before it did not sway a hair's breath. No air
blew in there from the outside. Besides, there was no
wind anyhow. As I came back to my place on
the sofa, Julia glanced up at me, and her look

(10:54):
told me that it would be useless to try to
shut off that discomforting draft. It came through no window,
it had no direction. Yet when I settled down on
the sofa, my neck below the back of it. From
time to time the hair on my head was slightly moved,
not by such a disturbance of air as would be
created by the passage of a person behind me, but

(11:14):
as if a mischievous sprite were blowing on it. Nothing
could have been slighter or more swiftly passing. Yet nothing
in that warm, fire lit room, and in the midst
of a company apparently absorbed in intercourse, could have been
more unnaturally and more insistently tormenting, or more chilling. Over
our coffee, we talked of nothing at all. If I

(11:36):
was ill at ease, then it was only from vague
forebodings or troubled imaginings of what Julia might be dreading,
or even already suffering. I knew the specter was in
our midst, I had not begun to suffer from it
for a minute or two. After the old servant had
taken her cups away too, the thing refrained from actual
contact with me. Julia knocked the black lumps of coal

(11:58):
into smaller pieces, from which bright yellow flames burst out,
illuminating our faces. Oddly, Annette took up her knitting. Giles
lit a cigar. It was all peaceful enough. I remember
that Eric sat behind us, all farthest from the fire,
into which he gazed meditatively most of the evening. Anette
tells me, only she and Giles could watch his face.

(12:22):
But Annette asked Giles quietly to tell us now how
he had passed the day. And it was then I
got up and went to the window to see if
it was open. It was then I first felt that draft.
I think it must have been the touch of I
see spectral fingers. I was able to listen to Giles's
tail until this touch became something worse. I made the

(12:42):
greatest effort of will I was capable of to follow
him all along. I suspected that he was putting Eric
through an inquisition, but later later I both heard and
did not hear. In response to Annette, Giles said he
had a very interesting day, but before recounting it, he
began to praise Julia for the charm of her house,

(13:03):
what she had been able to make out of such
a freakish old summer cottage built by a man who
he had learned, had been noted for a cold sense
of piety rather than a warm sense of beauty, and
had certainly bequeathed her little to work on. I recall
his accent on the word it was a good thing
for the commuters who lived in foresby that Julia had
come among them. Her influence would not be wholly lost.

(13:27):
By the way, and he spoke to Eric, not Julia,
how did you ever happen to come to this part
of the world greer? You can imagine that Annette and
I pricked up our ears at that. As for Eric,
Annette told me afterwards that he never moved a muscle
except to raise his eyebrows, as if surprised that Giles
should suddenly drag him thus into a conversation in which

(13:49):
he had had but a drowsy interest. He answered lazily
clearing his throat a little. I don't remember Pharaoh, just
how it was, asked Julia, do you, dear truly, I
believe that the past was dead for him by force
of his will to live. He had made it as
if it had never been. He denied it to himself,

(14:13):
and if he denied it to himself, it was no
lie for him to deny it to others. But Giles
kept protting and prodding into it, and was to do
even more. I know that it's sudden coming to life again,
drove Eric. For the time being. Mad, Julia could have
had no suspicion of what Giles was doing. She remembered
how Eric and she had been led into this part

(14:33):
of the world when towards the end of their honeymoon
they were wondering where to settle down. Dear me, there
was no talk this night, as there use once to
be a building, a nest, and being so full of
happy hopes that even the houses sang to them. The
song in this house had been abominable, but some one

(14:54):
had told them about Stanton, so we just came down
to have a look round and stumbled on this house.
Fancy that, said Giles, perhaps not heeding the weary tone
of Julia's voice. I never heard of Stanton until I
came to Foresby, though I had seen the Foresby scheme
more or less advertised. Some one in New York told you.

(15:14):
I suppose it is hard to think that it would
occur to a New Yorker to recommend such a sleepy,
out of the way village. I don't remember who it was.
Julia returned without much interest. As a matter of fact,
some one told Eric, and he told me she had
a fit of painful coughing. Eric started from his chair
and left the room to fetch her a warmer shawl.

(15:36):
By the time he had come back, I had changed
the conversation. He laid the shawl he brought with him
tenderly about his wife's shoulders, and then took his seat
again quietly. Giles began then to talk to us about
religious mania. Judging by Eric's face, Annette told me his
thoughts might have been far away from the talk. He
didn't move in his chair and continued to look meditatively

(15:58):
into the fire. It seemed to me a silly thing
for Giles to begin holding forth upon, but he was
leading up to his interesting experience of the afternoon. I
heard only a little of it. The intruder was beginning
to bother me in Stanton. That very afternoon, Giles had
come across an extraordinary human creature, whom, for lack of
any other word, he must call a girl. Though her

(16:20):
face was not without a regularity of form and feature,
she had appeared to him not more than half human.
She was abnormally blonde. That struck one first that in
the peculiar, somewhat hypnotic stare of her eyes he had
heard and seen her speaking in the village store. And
when she had opened her thin lips he saw that
her teeth were white and small, but widely separated from

(16:41):
each other. He got a most disagreeable impression of cruelty
and wickedness under anemic but constant sanctimony. My recollections beyond
this point are uncertain and intolerable to me. All the
time I was listening to Giles, it seemed to me
that the room grew darker and darker, and that the
sixth presence materialized, yet took on no substance became visible,

(17:04):
remained transparent. And if I had any sensation but that
of horror, it was a longing in some way to
stand by Julia. Annette tells me that the room certainly
was shadowy, some of the candles had burned out, but
it was very warm, not cold. Giles talked in his
usual voice and vividly, not as I thought, in whispers,
and suggestively. She couldn't see his face very well in

(17:27):
the firelight, but she remembers how the blue smoke from
his cigar showed up, and she thinks maybe that was
the ghost in my mind. Julia turned round towards him
once or twice, Yes, but she couldn't then see the
expression of her face, for it was in shadow. She
shouldn't have said it was horror struck anyhow, It couldn't

(17:48):
have been, for there was nothing horrible in what Giles said. No,
Julia certainly did not fall in trying to get to
Eric once she half lost her balance on the cricket.
Maybe Annette thinks she was trying to change her position
and her dress caught her and then she put a
hand down on the floor to keep from falling off. Now,
the room was certainly warm and very comfortable. What Giles

(18:10):
said was very interesting, yes, but not very pleasant, not
very nice. I looked half asleep, in a position that
you might think, Annette granted a little stiff if your
attention were called to it, but not enough to notice otherwise.
I tell you my recollections of the rest of that
evening at Eric's are intolerable to me. I will not

(18:31):
put myself, even in imagination, back in that room, warm
and charming as it was. One night last winter, Annette
and I went to visit some ancient relatives of mine
who lived in an old house near Boston. It was
a cold night, and we sat with the other guests
before the great hung in under an old fashioned white
marble half moon chimney piece. The fire was of kennel coal,

(18:54):
and there was no other light in the room. I
stood it as long as I could, and then, knowing
well I should be branded as a harsh and crude
New Yorker by the sentimental or was it thrifty gathering,
I demanded gaslight of my ancients. I would not sit,
no matter what the cost to my reputation, in a
circle of faces distorted and made luridly strange by the

(19:17):
dancing light of cannel coal, even in that room where
sanctimony masked nothing more hateful than complacency. I had already
begun to feel that deadly, icy malice was taking the
shape of a woman loping from corner to corner and
stealthily along the shadowy walls. Ten minutes more of that
uncertain light than I should have felt hands about my person,

(19:39):
or should have seen them at the throat of my wife. No,
not even in my imagination will I put myself back
in the living room of Eric's sinister house for those
few hours, warm and cozy as they say it was
that night, when without the air was sharp and still
and frosty. I drove a Net and Giles home in
the Ford. They were tired. I was exhausted. None of

(20:03):
us had slept the night before. Yet Giles would have
some beer and a cigarette. He struck me as boisterous
and obtrusive. Well, he said to me, what did you
think of my story? I didn't hear what you said,
I replied, yawning. I know. Nevertheless, I am on the
track of what of what is back of Eric Greer?

(20:26):
Look here, I said, but without much fire. If there's
wrong about Eric, he's been the victim, and God knows
still is the victim not the wrong doer. I don't
want to hear any more about it. It's too horrible
what I know. I'm going to bed, to bed. I
walked the floor for a couple of hours. Annette brought

(20:47):
me some whisky, much whisky. She was as calm and
as patient as a woman well can be. She undressed
and got into bed and went on with her knitting.
Her eyes grew more and more anxious, till at last
I caught a look in them which made me ashamed
of my frenzy, yet all by my inner self, so
to speak. I was shocked and desperate. I never have

(21:08):
been able to see animals or persons suffer, and the
thought of the hideous torture Julia might be undergoing, even
as I paced up and down the room, all but
unmanned me. I had seen them, yes, both the woman
and the little old man, trying to strangle her. And
Annette thought she had tried merely to change her position
on the cricket. You must imagine. The horrible picture came

(21:33):
back before me again and again. I knew how those
hands could clutch and pinch. They had been on me.
But I give you my word, I was nothing, nothing,
It was Julia, high spirited, frail little thing, sick too
passionately in love with her husband, her heart crying out

(21:53):
for him in her mortal need, yet wrenched, twisted, and
beaten back by unutterably malevolent fiends that loped about him.
She was so terribly alone. Eric, who would have given
his life blood drop by drop for her, was sitting
in the dark, wounded himself by her dumb actions which
he could only misunderstand, helpless to protect, even had he

(22:15):
known himself the instrument for her torture. Whenever he moved,
but for my wife's look, I would have dashed my
head against the wall. Instead, I threw myself on the
floor beside her, and hid my face on her bed.
She kept on knitting. I heard the low sound of
her needles, but I began, after a few moments to
feel the beneficence of her look. We waited a long

(22:37):
time in silence. Then I said to her, are our
children all right? Yes, dear, she replied softly. They are
sleeping peacefully, as you and I should be. We must
never take them over there again. We shall not need to.
What do you mean? This cannot go on much longer? Pierre,

(23:00):
Julia is going away. She told me in confidence to
night they're going to give up the old house at once,
and Eric he will go with her. I presume, no, no, no,
that cannot be again. There was a long silence between us.
The clock downstairs struck two, very faint. Through walls and

(23:20):
closed doors, I heard the regular comical sound of Giles's snoring.
An errant breeze came in through the window of our chamber.
Even at this mysterious hour, there was movement over the
darkened face of the earth. Annette, I asked, what was
Giles talking about about horrid, abnormal and secret people? You

(23:42):
know who? The father and the daughter insane, I guess,
though very pious. The girl Giles saw in Stanton. You
heard that, didn't you is the cousin and spit image
of the other girl, Morgan Snart and his daughter. They
were there to night. What do you mean, oh, Annette,
You must believe what I say. When Giles began to speak,

(24:06):
the woman stood behind Eric's chair. I didn't look, but
I felt and I know she was there, and that
she kept watching Julia and me. The little old man
came in later and took his place behind Giles. He
rubbed his hands all the time, and looked down at Julia,
often ready to grab her if she tried to get
to Eric. Think how terrible for a sensitive man like Eric,

(24:28):
if he ever had to be with things like them
when they were alive. Annette said nothing, indeed, what could
she say. Except for the faint, regular sound of Giles's snoring,
the house was silent as death. But after a while
Annette spoke again. Eric didn't seem very much interested, She said,

(24:50):
he was rather cynical. He was nervous about Julia. She
had a bad cold, and Giles bored him. I guess
he got restless after a while and began to clasp
and unclasp his hand. No wonder. Giles told some gruesome things,
how they starved themselves and their animals, and how though
they were pillars of the church in that neighborhood, there
was some horrid secret stories about the girl's being cruel.

(25:13):
Some one had seen her, Annette I whispered. That's when
they moved, when Giles told about her beating the dog
to death. That's when the old man made a sign
to the woman, and they got ready to leap at Julia.
Did they asked Annette as if sickened at all this,
Eric hated it. Did you see them attack Julia before heaven?

(25:40):
I did, Annette. They sprang when Giles said their name
was Snart. No, dear, said my wife soothingly. That's when
Eric jumped up out of his chair to put an
end to Giles's talk. Oh my Peter, dear, let us
not talk any more about it. Eric wouldn't like it.
He hated it. Come, you will only make yourself sick.

(26:00):
They are going away in a day or two. You've
been thinking so much about that old house that you've
got a kink in your brain. Julia's all right. She's
got a heavy coal, that's all. And what could she
expect from living in such a damp, old place, a Nette,
I said, looking up at her. I have seen what
I have seen. Do not talk about it, Do not
mention any more horrors. I can't bear it. And I

(26:24):
have heard what I have heard, a Nette. Julia is
in the most deadly and unnatural peril. She is sick
and weak. Besides, there may be a fiendish death in
that house. But they are going away, I tell you,
day after tomorrow. If Eric goes too with her, Good
God Pierre you don't mean that he will murder her.

(26:44):
She leaned forward over me, and I reached up for
her hands. There was a moment's hush, and then Heaven
save us, we heard the terrified screams of our sun
startled the Nette clutched me and almost stifled me. Then
as I broke away and got to my feet, her
mother's and stinked rose up within her, and she sprang
out of bed and ran barefooted into the children's bedroom.

(27:05):
I was hardly behind her. Bobby's screams had wakened the baby,
and she too began to cry. All in the dark.
My wife tore the little boy from his bed and
hugged him to her breast. She could not wake him.
He yelled the louder and beat at her with his fists.
I switched on the lights. Annette was walking up and
down like a wild, fierce woman, my buxom merry wife,

(27:26):
her hair flying about her, her bare feet falling soundless
like the pads of a lioness's feet. Go away, bad
dream boo boo, go away, bad wicked dream boo. There there,
my darling boy. Mother's here. Mother will kill the bad dream.
Mother will something as it were, flashed in my brain.
I knew saying that the boy might be in pain,

(27:46):
and that I would get hot water. I went out
of the room, but I had no sooner closed the
door behind me, as if to keep the sound of
the screaming from Giles than I darted into the northeast room,
ripped off the shade from the window, and looked out.
A waning moon shed light upon the highway. And on
the highway I saw a man, hatless, running towards our house.

(28:08):
He was almost here. If ever he got to my house,
I knew my son might not survive the force of
the evil that hounded him. I raced downstairs. The bolt
on the front door stuck. My fingers were all thumbs.
I thought I heard his steps on the granalithic walk,
and I think I cried out in anguish of fear,
Keep away, keep away. I swung the door open so
that it crashed back against the wall. I rushed out

(28:29):
and down the walk to the road. Eric ran into
my arms. He struggled to get by me into the house,
but I held him. Be quiet, I whispered, you can't
go in there, for God's sake. What's the matter? He
was horribly out of breath. His face had the look
of a man mortally stricken. In the wan moonlight, I
saw the tears streaming down his cheeks. It's Julia, she's sick.

(28:52):
Our telephone out of order. Let me use yours. I
was terribly alert. I pushed Eric away from our house
and led him in a wide circle round to the
garage and back, telling him the doctor's car was broken down,
that he must go himself and my ford. We pushed
the Ford to the street along the smooth cement driveway.
I didn't want a Nette to know the noise of

(29:13):
the engine in the back yard. I cranked it. I
shoved Eric into the front seat. I pushed the car off,
and when I saw him well down the road, I
went back into the house. Upstairs, in the children's room,
there was my son, laughing in his mother's arms. I
had saved him, but it was almost the last straw
for me that night. And Nette said almost nothing to
me until we were returned to our own room, and then,

(29:35):
seeing that my face was terribly pale, she was frightened
at her words of solicitude. I sat down on my
bed and broke down, whereupon treating me as if I
too had had a bad dream. She patted my bent shoulders,
caressed me, knelt down and took off my shoes and stockings,
and I, a grown man, let her do it. She
all but undressed me, and then she made me get

(29:57):
into the bath tub, which she had filled with hot water,
just hot enough, because Annette always does things just right.
When she tucked me into bed and gave me some
hot whiskey and lemon, I didn't know whether I was
laughing or crying. Nothing up to that stage in the
affair had made me feel so bad as barring Eric
from my house had made me feel. I would not

(30:18):
have told my wife of it, for anything, I did
not wish her to turn against the unfortunate fellow. But
she found out. She looked out the window and saw
the garage door open. Then I had to tell her,
for she would have gone down to close it and
would then have found the car gone. She hid her feelings.
I did not know whether she associated Eric's comings with

(30:40):
Bobby's bad dream. She would not let me talk at all.
I remember, though, the last thing I said to her
before I went to sleep, I said to her, squeezing
her hand, well, my Dear, you don't see what Julius
sees in that house after all end of chapter eight