精彩书摘
《百词斩·阅读计划：波西米亚丑闻》：
"Thank you. I am sorry to have interrupted you. Please continue your most interesting statement."
"We drove for at least an hour. Colonel Stark had said that it was only seven miles, but I should think, from our speed and the time that we took, that it must have been nearer twelve. He sat at my side in silence all the time, and I noticed that he was looking at me with great intensity. The country roads are quite bad in that part of the world, for we lurched and jolted terribly. I tried to look out of the windows to see where we were, but they were made of frosted glass, and I could see nothing except the occasional bright blur ofa passing light. Now and then I would try to start a conversation, but the colonel answered only in one-word answers. At last the bumping of the road was replaced by the crisp smoothness of a gravel road, and the carriage came to a stop. Colonel Stark sprang out, and, as I followed after him, pulled me swiftly into the house. We stepped, as it were, right out of the carriage and into the hall, so that I saw nothing of the front of the house. The moment I entered, the door slammed heavily behind us, and I heard the carriage drive away.
"It was completely dark inside the house, and the colonel fumbled about looking for matches and muttering under his breath. Suddenly a door opened at the other end of the passage, and a long, golden bar of light shot out in our direction. It grew broader, and a woman appeared with a lamp in her hand, which she held above her head. I could see that she was pretty and richly dressed. She spoke a few words in a foreign language that sounded like a question, and when my companion replied, she seemed so astonished that the lamp nearly fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room from which she had come, he walked toward me again with the lamp in his hand.
"'Please wait in this room for a few minutes,' said he, throwing open another door. It was a quiet, plainly furnished room, with a round table in the center, on which several German books were scattered. Colonel Stark put down the lamp on the table. 'I shall not keep you waiting long,' said he, and vanished into the darkness.
"I glanced at the books upon the table, and in spite of my ignorance of German I could see that two of them were books on science, the others being volumes of poetry. Then I walked across to the window, hoping that I might catch some glimpse of the countryside, but a wooden shutter, heavily barred, was folded across it. It was a very silent house. There was an old clock ticking loudly somewhere in the passage, but otherwise everything was deadly still. A vague feeling of uneasiness began to steal over me. Who were these Germans, and why were they living in this strange, out-of-the-way place? And where was the place? I was ten miles
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