The Sinful Stones Read Online Free

some mechanics built up with their masters. Why, you came haring up here, young Pibble, to find out about your damned dad, dead these forty-three years—and your dad would have stayed in that shocking little house, just in case I sent for him. That’s why I trust you. Help me back to my chair.”
    He was swaying on his stick by the locked bureau, looking frailer all of a sudden. Pibble went across, took him by the arm and guided him back, settling him in the pose in which he’d first found him. He got no thanks.
    â€œMain point is,” said Sir Francis, “I’ve not shown that stuff to a soul, not even Dorrie. But it’s been nabbed by some scoundrel and sold to a common Sunday rag.”
    â€œMy father …” said Pibble.
    â€œShut up, man—I’m going soggy any minute—I can feel it coming. Dorrie’ll bring you back in three hours forty minutes and you can tell me who you’ve arrested.”
    â€œIt’s the middle of the night.”
    â€œVery likely. Now send Dorrie in—she’ll be waiting outside.”
    â€œI shan’t find anything out at this hour of the night.”
    â€œOh, go away and leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m tired?”
    The change had been quite extraordinary in its speed: from the clan chief of the highlands of the intellect to this whining elder. Sir Francis watched dully as Pibble lifted the microphone out of the tumbler, removed the log, settled the fender into position, carried the tumbler back into the bleak little bedroom, returned the carafe and floorcloth to their proper places, and left. Sister Dorothy, in her sentinel stance, was waiting for him at the top of the stairs.
    â€œIs he all right?” she hissed.
    â€œI think so. I left when he said he was tired.”
    â€œYou’ve kept him ten minutes longer than usual.”
    It was an accusation. She handed Pibble the lantern and went through the door without another word.
    It was hard to walk downstairs with a natural gait while following the flex by the yellow dimness from the wick; luckily the amateur stonemasons had done their work so unevenly that a certain amount of stooping and peering seemed plausible. The flex turned the corner at the bottom of the steps in the direction of Brother Hope in his alcove. Along the flat Pibble was forced to move faster, but a carefully timed stumble allowed him to stoop close enough to see that it still ran along the right-angle where the paving joined the wall. Then it snaked up into the alcove.
    â€œExcuse me,” said Pibble. “I’d like to go out for a short walk. Is there anywhere I mustn’t go?”
    Brother Hope emerged like a snail from the shell of his trance, with a slow, blind hesitation.
    â€œPardon?” he said.
    â€œI’d like to go for a short walk. Is there anywhere I mustn’t go?”
    â€œ. . . a naughty boy to get so excited,” said a strange, cooing voice out of nowhere. Sir Francis’s querulous creak got as far as “I’m all …” before Brother Hope appeared to scratch his buttock and cut him off.
    â€œThe island’s yours, and God’s,” said Brother Hope. “Make yourself at home.”
    â€œThanks,” said Pibble, and walked on. The flex naturally no longer ran along the wall, Damned stuff, electricity, for the microphone to dry out and function perfectly at the moment he was opposite the alcove—Brother Hope must have a lowish opinion of policemen if he didn’t expect Pibble to guess that something was awry. Wrong—they didn’t know he was a policeman. Even so, for verisimilitude’s sake, he’d have to go for his walk, though his neck was aching for the pillow. As he turned the next corner of the cloisters a soft shape fluttered out from the arches, thin arms coiled round his neck and the corner of his jawbone was kissed so fervently that he could feel the slimy hardness of teeth