One's like 'The Blue Bells of Scotland.' You said
yourself the other day it would drive you mad if you heard it often.
Well, there it was, jangling away in its self-sufficient wheezy voice.
Semyonov was sitting in the armchair reading the newspaper, Markovitch
was standing behind the chair with the strangest look on his face.
Suddenly, just as I came in he bent down and I heard him say: 'Won't you
stop the beastly thing?' 'Certainly,' said Semyonov, and he went across
in his heavy plodding kind of way and stopped it. I went off to my room
and then, upon my word, five minutes after I heard it begin again, thin
and reedy through the walls. But when I came back into the dining-room
there was no one there. You can't think how that tune irritated me, and
I tried to stop it. I went up to it, but I couldn't find the hinge or
the key. So on it went, over and over again. Then there's another thing.
Have you ever noticed how some chairs will creak in a room, just as
though some one were sitting down or getting up? It always, in ordinary
times, makes you jump, but when you're strung up about something--!
There's a chair in the Markovitches' dining-room just like that.
Pages:
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503