The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge : Large Print

"I drove to the place--about two miles on the south side of Esher.

The house was a fair-sized one, standing back from the road, with a curving drive which was banked with high evergreen shrubs.

It was an old, tumbledown building in a crazy state of disrepair.

When the trap pulled up on the grass-grown drive in front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in visiting a man whom I knew so slightly.

He opened the door himself, however, and greeted me with a great show of cordiality.

I was handed over to the manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his hand, to my bedroom.

The whole place was depressing. Our dinner was tete-a-tete, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him.

He continually drummed his fingers on the table, gnawed his nails, and gave other signs of nervous impatience.

The dinner itself was neither well served nor well cooked, and the gloomy presence of the taciturn servant did not help to enliven us.

I can assure you that many times in the course of the evening I wished that I could invent some excuse which would take me back to Lee."One thing comes back to my memory which may have a bearing upon the business that you two gentlemen are investigating.

I thought nothing of it at the time. Near the end of dinner a note was handed in by the servant.

I noticed that after my host had read it he seemed even more distrait and strange than before.

He gave up all pretence at conversation and sat, smoking endless cigarettes, lost in his own thoughts, but he made no remark as to the contents.