"But somehow I never looked Doctor Savage up. It was unfriendly, perhaps, but—well—in point of fact I never did."
"Had neater and sweeter things to look up, eh, Colonel?" Challoner put in again. "I believe you. Wish I'd ever had your luck."
Here resisted laughter got the better of him, jarring the quiet of the woods with a coarseness of quality startling even to his own ears. Nothing betrays lack of breeding more than a laugh. He knew this, and it galled him. He felt angry, and hastened in so far as he might to recover himself.
"Seriously, though, joking apart, I very much wish, as things turn out, you had kept in touch with the doctor," he said. "Then you would have been in a position to give me your views on this son of his. Mr. Smyrthwaite seems to have taken an awful fancy to him. But I don't attach much importance to that. He was ill and crotchety, just in the state of health to take unreasoning likes and dislikes. And I can't help being anxious, I tell you, Colonel. It does not affect my pocket in any way—I'm not thinking of myself. And I am no sentimentalist. My line of business leaves neither time nor room for that. Still I tell you candidly it goes tremendously against the grain with me to think of some irresponsible, long-haired, foreign, Bohemian chap being mixed up with the affairs of two refined English gentlewomen like the Miss Smyrthwaites. Of course he may turn out a less shadowy individual than I anticipate. Nothing would please me better than that he should. But, in any case, I mean to keep my eye upon him. He's not going to play hanky-panky with the ladies' money if Joseph Challoner can prevent it. I hold myself responsible to you, as well as to them and to my own conscience, Colonel, to keep things straight."
"I am confident you will do your best," the other replied, graciously. "And I trust you to consult me whenever you think fit. Don't hesitate to make use of me."
"I won't, Colonel. Make yourself easy on that point. I am greatly indebted to you. I won't."
The end of the long avenue had come into sight, where, between high stone gate-posts—surmounted by just-lighted gas-lamps—it opens upon the main road and tram-line running from Stourmouth to Barryport. After the silence and solitude of the woods the street appeared full of movement. A row of shop-fronts, across the roadway, threw a yellow glare over the pavement and on to the snow-heaps piled in the gutter. The overhead wires hummed in the frosty air. A gang of boys snowballed one another in the middle of the street, scattering before some passing cart, and rushed back, shouting, to renew the fight. Groups of home-going workmen tramped along the pavement, their breath and the smoke of their pipes making a mist about their heads in the cold winter dusk.
Challoner held out a paw-like hand.
"You'll excuse me if I leave you, Colonel?" he said. "I have outstayed my time already. I am afraid I must be getting home—a lot of work waiting for me. Good-night."
He turned away. Then, just inside the gates, a sudden thought apparently striking him, he hesitated and came back.
"By the way," he said, "I had been meaning to write a line to you to-day, but this sad business at the Tower House put it clean out of my head. I may just as well ask you by word of mouth. It'll save you the bother of a note. Woodford has nominated me for election at the club. Your name, as one of the oldest and most influential members, of course, carries much weight. If you second me you'll do me a great kindness."
Here the towering, well-lighted tram from Barryport sailed majestically up, with a long-drawn growl, ending in a heavy clang and thin shriek as the powerful brakes gripped, bringing it to a stop.
"All right. I may take it for settled, then. I have your promise. Really I am awfully obliged to you. Don't let me make you miss your tram, though. Hi! conductor, steady a minute. Colonel Haig's going with you.—Thanks, Colonel, good-night," Challoner cried, all in a breath, without giving the hustled, harried, almost apoplectic ex-warrior time to utter a syllable good or bad.
"Had him neatly," he said to himself, as he turned once more into the stillness and twilight of the woods. "He can't back out—daren't back out. Their swagger, aristocratic, d——your-impudence Stourmouth Club taken by assault!"
And again he laughed, but this time the coarse quality of the sound failed to jar him. On the contrary, he rather relished its stridency. He was winning all along the line, so he could afford—for a little while here alone under the snow-laden fir-trees in the deepening dusk—to be himself.
In the hall at Heatherleigh his man-servant—a thin, yellowish, gentle, anxious-looking person, who played the part of shuttlecock to the battledores of his strong master and of a commanding wife, ten years his senior—met him.
"Mr. Pewsey is waiting for you in the smoke-room, sir," he said, while helping Challoner off with the pepper-and-salt-mixture overcoat. "And Mrs. Spencer, sir, called to leave this note. She said there was no answer, but I was to be sure and give it to you directly you came in."
Challoner took the note, and stopped for a minute under the hanging, colored-glass gas-lantern to read it. It was written in a large, showy, yet tentative hand, on highly scented mauve paper with a white border to it, and ran thus:
"B. gone to Mary church to dine and sleep. Alone. Come round if you can after dinner. Want you. Quite safe. Love. GWYNNIE."
Challoner rolled the small scented sheet into a ball and tossed it viciously on to the fire, watching till the flame licked it up.
"No, there's no answer. Quite true, Mrs. Gwynnie—even even less answer than you suppose or will in the least bit like," he said, between his teeth.
Then he opened the door and passed into the smoking-room to join his junior partner, with a quite expressionless face.
CHAPTER V
PASSAGES FROM JOANNA SMYRTHWAITE'S LOCKED BOOK
"You won't go sitting up writing to-night, Miss Joanna? You should get right into bed, for you are properly worn out."
"It would be useless for me to attempt to sleep yet, Isherwood, but I shall not sit up late."
This, between two women standing on the gallery of the spacious, heavily carpeted stair-head. Save for the feeble light of their glass-shaded candles the place was in darkness. The atmosphere, oppressive from the heat given off by radiators in the hall below and upon the landing itself, was permeated by the clinging odor of some disinfectant. They spoke in subdued voices, covered and whispering as those of reverent-minded persons unwillingly compelled to hold conversation in church. The northeasterly wind—which, at this same hour, cried homeless along the steep house-roofs of the Quai Malaquais to the disturbance of Gabrielle St. Leger's meditations upon the deceptions of modern marriage—raked the thick-set fir and pine trees bordering the carriage-drive outside, and shattered against the elaborately leaded panes of the high staircase windows, making the thick velvet curtains which covered them sway and quiver in the draught.
"You had better let me wait and brush your hair as usual, Miss Joanna. It might soothe your nerves," the elder of the two women said. She was a comely, vigilant-eyed person, a touch of mustache on her long upper lip and a ruddiness upon her high cheek-bones as of sun-ripened fruit. Though well on in the sixties, her carriage was upright, and her hair, looped window-curtain fashion over her ears and plaited in a round at the back of her head, still showed as black as her close-fitted black silk dress. First nurse in the Smyrthwaite family, now for many years lady's maid and housekeeper, capable, prejudiced, caustic of speech, untiring in faithful devotion to those—the very few—whom she loved, Mrs. Isherwood, virgin and spinster, represented a domestic type becoming all too rapidly extinct.
The younger woman made no immediate answer. Her bearing and attitude bespoke a great lassitude as she stood resting her right hand on the ball of the newel-post. The light of the candle she carried was thrown upward, showing a face making but small claim to beauty. A thick, pasty complexion, straight, heavy, yellowish auburn hair turned back over a pad from the high, square