"Well, gentlemen," said Dr. Warner cheerfully, "I've been pretty
well entertained with all this pointless and incompetent tomfoolery
for a couple of days; but it seems to be wearing rather thin,
and I'm engaged for a city dinner. Among the hundred flowers
of futility on both sides I was unable to detect any sort of reason
why a lunatic should be allowed to shoot me in the back garden."
He had settled his silk hat on his head and gone out sailing placidly to
the garden gate, while the almost wailing voice of Pym still followed him:
"But really the bullet missed you by several feet." And another voice added:
"The bullet missed him by several years."
There was a long and mainly unmeaning silence, and then
Moon said suddenly, "We have been sitting with a ghost.
Dr. Herbert Warner died years ago."
Chapter V
How the Great Wind Went
from Beacon House
Mary was walking between Diana and Rosamund slowly up and down the garden;
they were silent, and the sun had set. Such spaces of daylight as remained
open in the west were of a warm-tinted white, which can be compared
to nothing but a cream cheese; and the lines of plumy cloud that ran
across them had a soft but vivid violet bloom, like a violet smoke.
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