Free Endless Night by Agatha Christie Page A

flew over five days ago. I met one of your hatchet-faced lawyers there—the English one.”
    â€œMr. Crawford?”
    â€œThat’s the man. In fact, operations have already started: clearing the ground, removing the ruins of the old house, foundations—drains—When you get back to England I’ll be there to meet you.” He got out his plans then and we sat talking and looking at our house to be. There was even a rough water-colour sketch of it as well as the architectural elevations and plans.
    â€œDo you like it, Mike?”
    I drew a deep breath.
    â€œYes,” I said, “that’s it. That’s absolutely it. ”
    â€œYou used to talk about it enough, Mike. When I was in a fanciful mood I used to think that piece of land had laid a spell upon you. You were a man in love with a house that you might never own, that you might never see, that might never even be built.”
    â€œBut it’s going to be built,” said Ellie. “It’s going to be built, isn’t it?”
    â€œIf God or the devil wills it,” said Santonix. “It doesn’t depend on me.”
    â€œYou’re not any—any better?” I asked doubtfully.
    â€œGet it into your thick head. I shall never be better. That’s not on the cards.”
    â€œNonsense,” I said. “People are finding cures for things all the time. Doctors are gloomy brutes. They give people up for dead and then the people laugh and cock a snook at them and live for another fifty years.”
    â€œI admire your optimism, Mike, but my malady isn’t one of that kind. They take you to hospital and give you a change of blood and back you come again with a little leeway of life, a little span of time gained. And so on, getting weaker each time.”
    â€œYou are very brave,” said Ellie.
    â€œOh no, I’m not brave. When a thing is certain there’s nothing to be brave about. All you can do is find your consolation.”
    â€œBuilding houses?”
    â€œNo, not that. You’ve less vitality all the time, you see, and therefore building houses becomes more difficult, not easier. The strength keeps giving out. No. But there are consolations. Sometimes very queer ones.”
    â€œI don’t understand you,” I said.
    â€œNo, you wouldn’t, Mike. I don’t know really that Ellie would. She might.” He went on, speaking not so much to us as to himself. “Two things run together, side by side. Weakness and strength. The weakness of fading vitality and the strength of frustrated power. It doesn’t matter, you see, what you do now! You’re going todie anyway. So you can do anything you choose. There’s nothing to deter you, there’s nothing to hold you back. I could walk through the streets of Athens shooting down every man or woman whose face I didn’t like. Think of that.”
    â€œThe police could arrest you just the same,” I pointed out.
    â€œOf course they could. But what could they do? At the most take my life. Well my life’s going to be taken by a greater power than the law in a very short time. What else could they do? Send me to prison for twenty—thirty years? That’s rather ironical, isn’t it, there aren’t twenty or thirty years for me to serve. Six months—one year—eighteen months at the utmost. There’s nothing anyone can do to me. So in the span that’s left to me I am king. I can do what I like. Sometimes it’s a very heady thought. Only—only, you see, there’s not much temptation because there’s nothing particularly exotic or lawless that I want to do.”
    After we had left him, as we were driving back to Athens, Ellie said to me:
    â€œHe’s an odd person. Sometimes you know, I feel frightened of him.”
    â€œFrightened, of Rudolf Santonix—why?”
    â€œBecause he isn’t like other people and because he has a—I don’t