“Maclaren,” said the other, as he stopped
in front of the garage, “if everyone was as
good a passenger as you I’d enjoy motoring; but
after all, a car can’t act up like a horse.”
He concluded gloomily: “There’s no
fight in it.”
And he started toward the house, but Maclaren, staring
after the departing figure, muttered: “There’s
only one sort that’s worse than a damn fool,
and that’s a young one.”
It was through a door opening off the veranda that
Anthony entered the house, stealthily as a burglar,
and with the same nervous apprehension. Before
him stretched a wide hall, dimly illumined by a single
light which splashed on the Italian table and went
glimmering across the floor. Across the hall
was his destination—the broad balustraded
staircase, which swept grandly up to the second floor.
Toward this he tiptoed steadying himself with one
hand against the wall. Almost to his goal, he
heard a muffled footfall and shrank against the wall
with a catlike agility, but, though the shadow fell
steep and gloomy there, luck was against him.
A middle-aged servant of solemn port, serene with
the twofold dignity of double chin and bald head,
paused at the table in his progress across the room,
and swept the apartment with the judicial eye of one
who knows that everything is as it should be but will
not trust even the silence of night. So that
bland blue eye struck first on the faintly shining
top hat of Anthony, ran down his overcoat, and lingered
in gloomy dismay on the telltale streak of white where
the trouser leg should have been.
What he thought not even another Oedipus could have
conjectured. The young master very obviously
did not wish to be observed, and in such times Peters
at could be blinder than the bat noon-day and more
secret than the River Styx. He turned away, unhurried,
the fold of that double chin a little more pronounced
over the severe correctness of his collar.
A very sibilant whisper pursued him. He stopped
again, still without haste, and turned not directly
toward Anthony, but at a discreet angle, with his
eyes fixed firmly upon the ceiling.
A SESSION OF CHAT
The whisper grew distinct in words.
“Peters, you old numskull, come here!”
The approach of Peters was something like the sidewise
waddle of a very aged crab. He looked to the
north, but his feet carried him to the east.
That he was much moved was attested by the colour which
had mounted even to the gleaming expanse of that nobly
bald head.
“Yes, Master Anthony—I mean Mr. Anthony?”
He set his teeth at the faux pas.
“Peters, look at me. Confound it, I haven’t
murdered any one. Are you busy?”
It required whole seconds for the eyes to wheel round
upon Anthony, and they were immediately debased from
the telltale white of that leg to the floor.
