Explore "The Secret House" by Edgar Wallace on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was three days after the exchange of letters that Count Poltavo, in the rough tweeds of a country gentleman -- a garb which hardly suited his figure or presence -- strolled carelessly across the downs, making his way to their highest point, a great rolling slope, from the crest of which a man could see half a dozen miles in every direction.
The sky was overcast and a chill wind blew; it was such a day upon which he might be certain no pleasure-seekers would be abroad. To his left, half hidden in the furthermost shelter of the downs, veiled as it was for ever under a haze of blue grey smoke, lay Great Bradley, with its chimneys and its busy industrial life. To his right he caught a glimpse of the square ugly facade of the Secret House, half hidden by the encircling trees. To its right was a chimney stack from which a lazy feather of smoke was drifting. Behind him the old engine house of the deserted mines, and to the right of that the pretty little cottage from which a week before Lady Constance Dex had so mysteriously disappeared, and which in consequence had been an object of pilgrimage for the whole countryside.