“Why do you ask that?” inquired Sir Henry,
“when she herself admitted that she had been
at the safe?”
“Because——” and the
other hesitated. “Well, for several reasons.
The story of your quarrel with mademoiselle has leaked
out.”
“The Whispers—eh, Goslin?”
laughed the old man in defiance. “Let the
people believe what they will. My daughter shall
never return to Glencardine—never!”
As he had been speaking the door had opened, and James
Flockart stood upon the threshold. He had overheard
the blind man’s words, and as he came forward
he smiled, more in satisfaction than in greeting.
CONTAINS A FURTHER MYSTERY
“My dear Edgar, when I met you in the Devonshire
Club last night I could scarcely believe my own eyes.
Fancy you turning up again!”
“Yes, strange, isn’t it, how two men may
drift apart for years, and then suddenly meet in a
club, as we have done, Murie?”
“Being with those fellows who were anxious to
go along and see the show at the Empire last night,
I had no opportunity of having a chat with you, my
dear old chap. That’s why I asked you to
look in.”
The two men were seated in Walter’s dingy chambers
on the second floor in Fig-Tree Court, Temple.
The room was an old and rather frowsy one, with shabby
leather furniture from which the stuffing protruded,
panelled walls, a carpet almost threadbare, and a formidable
array of calf-bound volumes in the cases lining one
wall. The place was heavy with tobacco-smoke
as the pair, reclining in easy-chairs, were in the
full enjoyment of very excellent cigars.
Walter’s visitor was a tall, dark man, some
six or seven years his senior, a rather spare, lantern-jawed
young fellow, whose dark-grey clothes were of unmistakable
foreign cut; and whose moustache was carefully trained
to an upward trend. No second glance was required
to decide that Edgar Hamilton was a person who, having
lived a long time on the Continent, had acquired the
cosmopolitan manner both in gesture and in dress.
“Well,” exclaimed Murie at last, blowing
a cloud of smoke from his lips, “since we parted
at Oxford I’ve been called to the Bar, as you
see. As for practice—well, I haven’t
any. The gov’nor wants me to go in for
politics, so I’m trying to please him by getting
my hand in. I make an odd speech or two sometimes
in out-of-the-world villages, and I hope, one day,
to find myself the adopted candidate for some borough
or other. Last year I was sent round the world
by my fond parents in order to obtain a broader view
of life. Is it not Tacitus who says, ’Sua
cuique vita obscura est’?”
“Yes, my dear fellow,” replied Hamilton,
stretching himself lazily in his chair. “And
surely we can say with Martial, ’Non est vivere,
sed valere vita’—I am well, therefore
I am alive! Mine has been a rather curious career
up to the present. I only once heard of you after
Oxford—through Arthur Price, who was, you’ll
remember, at Balliol. He wrote that he’d
spoken one night to you when at supper at the Savoy.
You had a bevy of beauties with you, he said.”
