but it is so.”
“Do you mind explaining?”
“I do.”
His eyes were set on mine. They seemed somehow to hold my gaze in fascination. There was in them an expression that was half ironical, half humorous.
“I believe this is the first time we have met,” he said, after a pause.
“I’m quite sure it is,” I answered. “You will forgive my saying so, but I don’t think any one who had once met you could very well forget it.”
He gave a great laugh.
“Perhaps you are right – ah! perhaps you are right,” he said laughing, wiping his moustache and mouth with his napkin. “Certainly I shall never forget you.”
I began, for the first time, to feel rather uncomfortable. He seemed to talk in enigmas. He was evidently what I believe is called “a character.”
“Do you know this part of the country well?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.
“Yes – and no,” he answered slowly, thoughtfully.
This was getting tiresome. I began to think he was trying to make fun of me. I began to wish the waiter had not put him to sit at my table.
Presently he looked again across at me, and said quite suddenly —
“Look here, Mr Ashton, let us understand each other at once, shall we?”
His eyes looked into mine again, and I again felt quite uneasy. He knew my name. I felt distinctly annoyed at the waiter having told him my name without first asking my permission, as I concluded he must have done. It was a great liberty on his part, I considered – an impertinence, more especially as he had not mentioned this stranger’s name to me.
“I shall not be at the ball – and yet I shall be there,” the big man continued, as I did not speak. “Tell me, do you return to Houghton after going to London?”
“You seem to know a good deal about me, Mr – ” I said, rather nettled, but hoping to draw his name from him.
He did not take the hint.
“Sir Charles is well, I hope? And Lady Thorold?” he went on. “And how is their charming daughter, Miss Vera? I have not seen her for some days. She seems to be as fond as ever of hunting. I think it a cold-blooded, brutal sport. In fact I don’t call it ‘sport’ at all – twenty or so couples of hounds after one fox, and the chances all in favour of the hounds. I have told her so more than once, and I believe that in her heart she agrees with me. As a matter of fact, I’m here in Oakham, on purpose to call on Sir Charles to-morrow, on a matter of business.”
I was astounded, also annoyed. Who on earth was this big man, who seemed to know so much, who spoke of Vera as though he knew her intimately and met her every day, and who apparently was acquainted also with Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, yet whom I had never before set eyes on, though I was so very friendly with the Thorolds?
The stranger had spoken of my well-beloved!
“You will forgive my asking you, I am sure,” I said, curiosity getting the better of me, “but – well, I have not the pleasure of knowing your name. Do you mind telling me?”
“Mind telling you my name?” he exclaimed, with a look of surprise. “Why, not in the least. My name is – well – Smithson – if you like. Any name will do?”
He must have noticed my sudden change of expression, for he said at once —
“You seem surprised?”
“I – well, I am rather surprised. But you merely are not Smithson,” I answered awkwardly. I was staring hard at him, scrutinising his face in order to discover some resemblance to the portrait which at that moment lay snugly at the bottom of my valise. The portrait showed a clean-shaven man, younger than this strange individual whom I had met, as I believed, for the first time, barely a quarter of an hour before. Age might have wrought changes, and the beard might have served as a disguise, but the man in the picture was certainly over thirty-four, and my companion here at dinner could not have been less than forty-five at most. Even the eyes, those betrayers of disguised faces, bore no resemblance that I could see to the eyes of the man in the picture. The beard and moustache of the man facing me were certainly not artificial. That I could see at a glance.
“Why are you surprised?” the man asked abruptly.
“It would take a long time to explain,” I answered, equivocating, “but it is a curious coincidence that only yesterday I almost met a man named Smithson. I was wondering if he could be some relation of yours. He was not like you in face.”
“Oh, so you know Smithson?”
“No, I don’t know him. I have never met him. I said I almost met him.”
“Have you never seen him, then?”
“Never in my life.”
“And yet you say he is ‘not like me in face.’ How do you know he is not like me in face if you have never seen him?”
The sudden directness of his tone disconcerted me. For an instant I felt like a witness being cross-examined by a bullying Counsel.
“I’ve seen a portrait of him.”
“Indeed?”
My companion raised his eyebrows.
“And where did you see a portrait of him?” he inquired pointedly.
This was embarrassing. Why was he suddenly so interested, so inquisitive? I had no wish to make statements which I felt might lead to my being dragged into saying all sorts of things I had no wish to say, especially to a stranger who, though he had led me to believe that he was acquainted with the Thorolds, apparently had no inkling of what had just happened at Houghton Park.
No inkling! I almost smiled as the thought occurred to me, and was quickly followed by the thought of the sensation the affair would create when the newspapers came to hear of what had happened, and began to “spread themselves” upon the subject, as they certainly would do very soon.
My companion’s voice dispelled my wandering reflections.
“Where did you see the portrait of this other Smithson?” he asked, looking at me oddly.
“In a friend’s house.”
“Was it at Houghton Park?”
“In point of fact, it was.”
His eyes seemed to read my thoughts, and I didn’t like it. He was silent for some moments. Then suddenly he rose.
“Well, Mr Ashton,” he said quite genially, as he extended his hand, “I am glad that we have met, and I trust we shall meet again. ‘In point of fact,’ to use your own phrase, we shall, and very soon. Until then – good-bye. I have enjoyed our little conversation. It has been so – what shall I say – informal, and it was so unexpected. I did not expect to meet you to-night, I can assure you.”
He was gone, leaving me in a not wholly pleasant frame of mind. The man puzzled me. Did I like him, or did I not? His personality attracted me, had done so from the moment I had set eyes on him framed in the doorway, but I was bound to admit that some of his observations had annoyed me. In particular, that remark: “We shall meet again, and very soon;” also his last words: “I did not expect to meet you to-night, I can assure you,” caused me some uneasiness in the face of all that had happened. Indeed all through dinner his remarks had somehow seemed to bear some hidden meaning.
Chapter Four
Further Mystery
I had to go up to London that night. My lawyers had written some days previously that they must see me personally at the earliest possible moment on some matter to do with my investments, which they controlled entirely, and the letter had been left lying at my flat in King Street before being forwarded. And as the Oakham police had impressed upon me that my presence would be needed in Oakham within the next day or two, I had decided to run up to London, see my lawyers and get