The House of Souls
catch him, but he just darted into the bushes and vanished. Aunt never said a word at the time, but that night when they got home she charged uncle with what she'd seen and asked him what it all meant. He was quite taken aback at first, and stammered and stuttered and said a spy wasn't his notion of a good wife, but at last he made her swear secrecy, and told her that he was a very high Freemason, and that the boy was an emissary of the order, who brought him messages of the greatest importance. But aunt didn't believe a word of it, as an uncle of hers was a mason, and he never behaved like that. It was then she began to be afraid that it was really Anarchists, or something of the kind, and every time the bell rang she thought that uncle had been found out, and the police had come for him.'
'What nonsense! As if a man with house property would be an Anarchist.'
'Well, she could see there must be some horrible secret, and she didn't know what else to think. And then she began to have the things through the post.'
'Things through the post! What do you mean by that?'
'All sorts of things; bits of broken bottle-glass, packed carefully as if it were jewellery; parcels that unrolled and unrolled worse than Chinese boxes, and then had "cat" in large letters when you came to the middle; old artificial teeth, a cake of red paint, and at last cockroaches.'
'Cockroaches by post! Stuff and nonsense; your aunt's mad.'
'Edward, she showed me the box; it was made to hold cigarettes, and there were three dead cockroaches
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