Sir Timothy walked that evening amongst the shadows. Two hours ago, the last of the workmen from the great furnishing and catering establishments who undertook the management of his famous entertainments, had ceased work for the day and driven off in the motor-brakes hired to take them to the nearest town. The long, low wing whose use no one was able absolutely to divine, was still full of animation, but the great reception-rooms and stately hall were silent and empty. In the gymnasium, an enormous apartment as large as an ordinary concert hall, two or three electricians were still at work, directed by the man who had accompanied Sir Timothy to the East End on the night before. The former crossed the room, his footsteps awaking strange echoes.
“There will be seating for fifty, sir, and standing room for fifty,” he announced. “I have had the ring slightly enlarged, as you suggested, and the lighting is being altered so that the start is exactly north and south.”
Sir Timothy nodded thoughtfully. The beautiful oak floor of the place was littered with sawdust and shavings of wood. Several tiers of seats had been arranged on the space usually occupied by swings, punching-balls and other artifices. On a slightly raised dais at the further end was an exact replica of a ring, corded around and with sawdust upon the floor. Upon the walls hung a marvellous collection of weapons of every description, from the modern rifle to the curved and terrible knife used by the most savage of known tribes.
“How are things in the quarters?” Sir Timothy asked.
“Every one is well, sir. Doctor Ballantyne arrived this afternoon. His report is excellent.”
Sir Timothy nodded and turned away. He looked into the great gallery, its waxen floors shining with polish, ready for the feet of the dancers on the morrow; looked into a beautiful concert-room, with an organ that reached to the roof; glanced into the banquetting hall, which extended far into the winter-garden; made his way up the broad stairs, turned down a little corridor, unlocked a door and passed into his own suite. There was a small dining-room, a library, a bedroom, and a bathroom fitted with every sort of device. A man-servant who had heard him enter, hurried from his own apartment across the way.
“You are not dining here, sir?” he enquired.
Sir Timothy shook his head.
“No, I am dining late at The Sanctuary,” he replied. “I just strolled over to see how the preparations were going on. I shall be sleeping over there, too. Any prowlers?”
“Photographer brought some steps and photographed the horses in the park from the top of the wall this afternoon, sir,” the man announced. “Jenkins let him go. Two or three pressmen sent in their cards to you, but they were not allowed to pass the lodge.”
Sir Timothy nodded. Soon he left the house and crossed the park towards The Sanctuary. He was followed all the way by horses, of which there were more than thirty in the great enclosure. One mare greeted him with a neigh of welcome and plodded slowly after him. Another pressed her nose against his shoulder and walked by his side, with his hand upon her neck. Sir Timothy looked a little nervously around, but the park itself lay almost like a deep green pool, unobserved, and invisible from anywhere except the house itself. He spoke a few words to each of the horses, and, producing his key, passed through the door in the wall into The Sanctuary garden, closing it quickly as he recognised Francis standing under the cedar-tree.
“Has Lady Cynthia arrived yet?” he enquired.
“Not yet,” Francis replied. “Margaret will be here in a minute. She told me to say that cocktails are here and that she has ordered dinner served on the terrace.”
“Excellent!” Sir Timothy murmured. “Let me try one of your cigarettes.”
“Everything ready for the great show to-morrow night?” Francis asked, as he served the cocktails.
“Everything is in order. I wonder, really,” Sir Timothy went on, looking at Francis curiously, “what you expect to see?”
“I don't think we any of us have any definite idea,” Francis replied. “We have all, of course, made our guesses.”
“You will probably be disappointed,” Sir Timothy warned him. “For some reason or other—perhaps I have encouraged the idea—people look upon my parties as mysterious orgies where things take place which may not be spoken of. They are right to some extent. I break the law, without a doubt, but I break it, I am afraid, in rather a disappointing fashion.”
A limousine covered in dust raced in at the open gates and came to a standstill with a grinding of brakes. Lady Cynthia stepped lightly out and came across the lawn to them.
“I am hot and dusty and I was disagreeable,” she confided, “but the peace of this wonderful place, and the sight of that beautiful silver thing have cheered me. May I have a cocktail before I go up to change? I am a little late, I know,” she went on, “but that wretched garden-party! I thought my turn would never come to receive my few words. Mother would have been broken-hearted if I had left without them. What slaves we are to royalty! Now shall I hurry and change? You men have the air of wanting your dinner, and I am rather that way myself. You look tired, dear host,” she added, a little hesitatingly.
“The heat,” he answered.
“Why you ever leave this spot I can't imagine,” she declared, as she turned away, with a lingering glance around. “It seems like Paradise to come here and breathe this air. London is like a furnace.”
The two men were alone again. In Francis' pocket were the two documents, which he had not yet made up his mind how to use. Margaret came out to them presently, and he strolled away with her towards the rose garden.
“Margaret,” he said, “is it my fancy or has there been a change in your father during the last few days?”
“There is a change of some sort,” she admitted. “I cannot describe it. I only know it is there. He seems much more thoughtful and less hard. The change would be an improvement,” she went on, “except that somehow or other it makes me feel uneasy. It is as though he were grappling with some crisis.”
They came to a standstill at the end of the pergola, where the masses of drooping roses made the air almost faint with their perfume. Margaret stretched out her hand, plucked a handful of the creamy petals and held them against her cheek. A thrush was singing noisily. A few yards away they heard the soft swish of the river.
“Tell me,” she asked curiously, “my father still speaks of you as being in some respects an enemy. What does he mean?”
“I will tell you exactly,” he answered. “The first time I ever spoke to your father I was dining at Soto's. I was talking to Andrew Wilmore. It was only a short time after you had told me the story of Oliver Hilditch, a story which made me realise the horror of spending one's life keeping men like that out of the clutch of the law.”
“Go on, please,” she begged.
“Well, I was talking to Andrew. I told him that in future I should accept no case unless I not only believed in but was convinced of the innocence of my client. I added that I was at war with crime. I think, perhaps, I was so deeply in earnest that I may have sounded a little flamboyant. At any rate, your father, who had overheard me, moved up to our table. I think he deduced from what I was saying that I was going to turn into a sort of amateur crime-investigator, a person who I gathered later was particularly obnoxious to him. At any rate, he held out a challenge. 'If you are a man who hates crime,' he said, or something like it, 'I am one who loves it.' He then went on to prophesy that a crime would be committed close to where we were, within an hour or so, and he challenged me to discover the assassin. That night Victor Bidlake was murdered just outside Soto's.”
“I remember! Do you mean to tell me, then,” Margaret went on, with a little shiver, “that father told you this was going to happen?”
“He certainly did,” Francis replied. “How his knowledge came I am not sure—yet. But he certainly knew.”
“Have you anything else against him?” she asked.
“There was the disappearance of Andrew Wilmore's younger brother, Reginald Wilmore. I have no right to connect your father with that, but Shopland, the Scotland Yard detective, who has charge of the case, seems to believe that the young man was brought into this neighbourhood, and some other indirect evidence which came into my hands does seem to point towards your father being concerned in the matter. I appealed to him at once but he only laughed at me. That matter, too, remains a mystery.”
Margaret was thoughtful for a moment. Then she turned towards the house. They heard the soft ringing of the gong.
“Will you believe me when I tell you this?” she begged, as they passed arm in arm down the pergola. “I am terrified of my father, though in many ways he is almost princely in his generosity and in the broad view he takes of things. Then his kindness to all dumb animals, and the way they love him, is the most amazing thing I ever knew. If we were alone here to-night, every animal in the house would be around his chair. He has even the cats locked up if we have visitors, so that no one shall see it. But I am quite honest when I tell you this—I do not believe that my father has the ordinary outlook upon crime. I believe that there is a good deal more of the Old Testament about him than the New.”
“And this change which we were speaking about?” he asked, lowering his voice as they reached the lawn.
“I believe that somehow or other the end is coming,” she said. “Francis, forgive me if I tell you this—or rather let me be forgiven—but I know of one crime my father has committed, and it makes me fear that there may be others. And I have the feeling, somehow, that the end is close at hand and that he feels it, just as we might feel a thunder-storm in the air.”
“I am going to prove the immemorial selfishness of my sex,” he whispered, as they drew near the little table. “Promise me one thing and I don't care if your father is Beelzebub himself. Promise me that, whatever happens, it shall not make any difference to us?”
She smiled at him very wonderfully, a smile which had to take the place of words, for there were servants now within hearing, and Sir Timothy himself was standing in the doorway.
Lady Cynthia and Sir Timothy strolled after dinner to the bottom of the lawn and watched the punt which Francis was propelling turn from the stream into the river.
“Perfectly idyllic,” Lady Cynthia sighed.
“We have another punt,” her companion suggested.
She shook her head.
“I am one of those unselfish people,” she declared, “whose idea of repose is not only to rest oneself but to see others rest. I think these two chairs, plenty of cigarettes, and you in your most gracious and discoursive mood, will fill my soul with content.”
“Your decision relieves my mind,” her companion declared, as he arranged the cushions behind her back. “I rather fancy myself with a pair of sculls, but a punt-pole never appealed to me. We will sit here and enjoy the peace. To-morrow night you will find it all disturbed—music and raucous voices and the stampede of my poor, frightened horses in the park. This is really a very gracious silence.”
“Are those two really going to marry?” Lady Cynthia asked, moving her head lazily in the direction of the disappearing punt.
“I imagine so.”
“And you? What are you going to do then?”
“I am planning a long cruise. I telegraphed to Southampton to-day. I am having my yacht provisioned and prepared. I think I shall go over to South America.”
She was silent for a moment.
“Alone?” she asked presently.
“I am always alone,” he answered.
“That is rather a matter of your own choice, is it not?”
“Perhaps so. I have always found it hard to make friends. Enemies seem to be more in my line.”
“I have not found it difficult to become your friend,” she reminded him.
“You are one of my few successes,” he replied.
She leaned back with half-closed eyes. There was nothing new about their environment—the clusters of roses, the perfume of the lilies in the rock garden, the even sweeter fragrance of the trim border of mignonette. Away in the distance, the night was made momentarily ugly by the sound of a gramophone on a passing launch, yet this discordant note seemed only to bring the perfection of present things closer. Back across the velvety lawn, through the feathery strips of foliage, the lights of The Sanctuary, shaded and subdued, were dimly visible. The dining-table under the cedar-tree had already been cleared. Hedges, newly arrived from town to play the major domo, was putting the finishing touches to a little array of cool drinks. And beyond, dimly seen but always there, the wall. She turned to him suddenly.
“You build a wall around your life,” she said, “like the wall which encircles your mystery house. Last night I thought that I could see a little way over the top. To-night you are different.”
“If I am different,” he answered quietly, “it is because, for the first time for many years, I have found myself wondering whether the life I had planned for myself, the things which I had planned should make life for me, are the best. I have had doubts—perhaps I might say regrets.”
“I should like to go to South America,” Lady Cynthia declared softly.
He finished the cigarette which he was smoking and deliberately threw away the stump. Then he turned and looked at her. His face seemed harder than ever, clean-cut, the face of a man able to defy Fate, but she saw something in his eyes which she had never seen before.
“Dear child,” he said, “if I could roll back the years, if from all my deeds of sin, as the world knows sin, I could cancel one, there is nothing in the world would make me happier than to ask you to come with me as my cherished companion to just whatever part of the world you cared for. But I have been playing pitch and toss with fortune all my life, since the great trouble came which changed me so much. Even at this moment, the coin is in the air which may decide my fate.”
“You mean?” she ventured.
“I mean,” he continued, “that after the event of which we spoke last night, nothing in life has been more than an incident, and I have striven to find distraction by means which none of you—not even you, Lady Cynthia, with all your breadth of outlook and all your craving after new things—would justify.”
“Nothing that you may have done troubles me in the least,” she assured him. “I do wish that you could put it all out of your mind and let me help you to make a fresh start.”
“I may put the thing itself out of my mind,” he answered sadly, “but the consequences remain.”
“There is a consequence which threatens?” she asked.
He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, he had recovered all his courage.
“There is the coin in the air of which I spoke,” he replied. “Let us forget it for a moment. Of the minor things I will make you my judge. Ledsam and Margaret are coming to my party to-morrow night. You, too, shall be my guest. Such secrets as lie on the other side of that wall shall be yours. After that, if I survive your judgment of them, and if the coin which I have thrown into the air comes, down to the tune I call—after that—I will remind you of something which happened last night—of something which, if I live for many years, I shall never forget.”
She leaned towards him. Her eyes were heavy with longing. Her arms, sweet and white in the dusky twilight, stole hesitatingly out.
“Last night was so long ago. Won't you take a later memory?”
Once again she lay in his arms, still and content.
As they crossed the lawn, an hour or so later, they were confronted by Hedges—who hastened, in fact, to meet them.
“You are being asked for on the telephone, sir,” he announced. “It is a trunk call. I have switched it through to the study.”
“Any name?” Sir Timothy asked indifferently.
The man hesitated. His eyes sought his master's respectfully but charged with meaning.
“The person refuses to give his name, sir, but I fancied that I recognised his voice. I think it would be as well for you to speak, sir.”
Lady Cynthia sank into a chair.
“You shall go and answer your telephone call,” she said, “and leave Hedges to serve me with one of these strange drinks. I believe I see some of my favourite orangeade.”
Sir Timothy made his way into the house and into the low, oak-beamed study with its dark furniture and latticed windows. The telephone bell began to ring again as he entered. He took up the receiver.
“Sir Timothy?” a rather hoarse, strained voice asked.
“I am speaking,” Sir Timothy replied. “Who is it?”
The man at the other end spoke as though he were out of breath. Nevertheless, what he said was distinct enough.
“I am John Walter.”
“Well?”
“I am just ringing you up,” the voice went on, “to give you what's called a sporting chance. There's a boat from Southampton midday tomorrow. If you're wise, you'll catch it. Or better still, get off on your own yacht. They carry a wireless now, these big steamers. Don't give a criminal much of a chance, does it?”
“I am to understand, then,” Sir Timothy said calmly, “that you have laid your information?”
“I've parted with it and serve you right,” was the bitter reply. “I'm not saying that you're not a brave man, Sir Timothy, but there's such a thing as being foolhardy, and that's what you are. I wasn't asking you for half your fortune, nor even a dab of it, but if your life wasn't worth a few hundred pounds—you, with all that money—well, it wasn't worth saving. So now you know. I've spent ninepence to give you a chance to hop it, because I met a gent who has been good to me. I've had a good dinner and I feel merciful. So there you are.”
“Do I gather,” Sir Timothy asked, in a perfectly level tone, “that the deed is already done?”
“It's already done and done thoroughly,” was the uncompromising answer. “I'm not ringing up to ask you to change your mind. If you were to offer me five thousand now, or ten, I couldn't stop the bally thing. You've a sporting chance of getting away if you start at once. That's all there is to it.”
“You have nothing more to say?”
“Nothing! Only I wish to God I'd never stepped into that Mayfair agency. I wish I'd never gone to Mrs. Hilditch's as a temporary butler. I wish I'd never seen any one of you! That's all. You can go to Hell which way you like, only, if you take my advice, you'll go by the way of South America. The scaffold isn't every man's fancy.”
There was a burr of the instrument and then silence. Sir Timothy carefully replaced the receiver, paused on his way out of the room to smell a great bowl of lavender, and passed back into the garden.
“More applicants for invitations?” Lady Cynthia enquired lazily.
Her host smiled.
“Not exactly! Although,” he added, “as a matter of fact my party would have been perhaps a little more complete with the presence of the person to whom I have been speaking.”
Lady Cynthia pointed to the stream, down which the punt was slowly drifting. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and Francis' figure, as he stood there, was undefined and ghostly. A thought seemed to flash into her mind. She leaned forward.
“Once,” she said, “he told me that he was your enemy.”
“The term is a little melodramatic,” Sir Timothy protested. “We look at certain things from opposite points of view. You see, my prospective son-in-law, if ever he becomes that, represents the law—the Law with a capital 'L'—which recognises no human errors or weaknesses, and judges crime out of the musty books of the law-givers of old. He makes of the law a mechanical thing which can neither bend nor give, and he judges humanity from the same standpoint. Yet at heart he is a good fellow and I like him.”
“And you?”
“My weakness lies the other way,” he confessed, “and my sympathy is with those who do not fear to make their own laws.”
She held out her hand, white and spectral in the momentary gloom. At the other end of the lawn, Francis and Margaret were disembarking from the punt.
“Does it sound too shockingly obvious,” she murmured, “if I say that I want to make you my law?”
It would have puzzled anybody, except, perhaps, Lady Cynthia herself, to have detected the slightest alteration in Sir Timothy's demeanour during the following day, when he made fitful appearances at The Sanctuary, or at the dinner which was served a little earlier than usual, before his final departure for the scene of the festivities. Once he paused in the act of helping himself to some dish and listened for a moment to the sound of voices in the hall, and when a taxicab drove up he set down his glass and again betrayed some interest.
“The maid with my frock, thank heavens!” Lady Cynthia announced, glancing out of the window. “My last anxiety is removed. I am looking forward now to a wonderful night.”
“You may very easily be disappointed,” her host warned her. “My entertainments appeal more, as a rule, to men.”
“Why don't you be thoroughly original and issue no invitations to women at all?” Margaret enquired.
“For the same reason that you adorn your rooms and the dinner-table with flowers,” he answered. “One needs them—as a relief. Apart from that, I am really proud of my dancing-room, and there again, you see, your sex is necessary.”
“We are flattered,” Margaret declared, with a little bow. “It does seem queer to think that you should own what Cynthia's cousin, Davy Hinton, once told me was the best floor in London, and that I have never danced on it.”
“Nor I,” Lady Cynthia put in. “There might have been some excuse for not asking you, Margaret, but why an ultra-Bohemian like myself has had to beg and plead for an invitation, I really cannot imagine.”
“You might find,” Sir Timothy said, “you may even now—that some of my men guests are not altogether to your liking.”
“Quite content to take my risk,” Lady Cynthia declared cheerfully. “The man with the best manners I ever met—it was at one of Maggie's studio dances, too—was a bookmaker. And a retired prize-fighter brought me home once from an Albert Hall dance.”
“How did he behave?” Francis asked.
“He was wistful but restrained,” Lady Cynthia replied, “quite the gentleman, in fact.”
“You encourage me to hope for the best,” Sir Timothy said, rising to his feet. “You will excuse me now? I have a few final preparations to make.”
“Are we to be allowed,” Margaret enquired, “to come across the park?”
“You would not find it convenient,” her father assured her. “You had better order a car, say for ten o'clock. Don't forget to bring your cards of invitation, and find me immediately you arrive. I wish to direct your proceedings to some extent.”
Lady Cynthia strolled across with him to the postern-gate and stood by his side after he had opened it. Several of the animals, grazing in different parts of the park, pricked up their ears at the sound. An old mare came hobbling towards him; a flea-bitten grey came trotting down the field, his head in the air, neighing loudly.
“You waste a great deal of tenderness upon your animal friends, dear host,” she murmured.
He deliberately looked away from her.
“The reciprocation, at any rate, has its disadvantages,” he remarked, glancing a little disconsolately at the brown hairs upon his coat-sleeve. “I shall have to find another coat before I can receive my guests—which is a further reason,” he added, “why I must hurry.”
At the entrance to the great gates of The Walled House, two men in livery were standing. One of them examined with care the red cards of invitation, and as soon as he was satisfied the gates were opened by some unseen agency. The moment the car had passed through, they were closed again.
“Father seems thoroughly mediaeval over this business,” Margaret remarked, looking about her with interest. “What a quaint courtyard, too! It really is quite Italian.”
“It seems almost incredible that you have never been here!” Lady Cynthia exclaimed. “Curiosity would have brought me if I had had to climb over the wall!”
“It does seem absurd in one way,” Margaret agreed, “but, as a matter of fact, my father's attitude about the place has always rather set me against it. I didn't feel that there was any pleasure to be gained by coming here. I won't tell you really what I did think. We must keep to our bargain. We are not to anticipâté.”
At the front entrance, under the covered portico, the white tickets which they had received in exchange for their tickets of invitation, were carefully collected by another man, who stopped the car a few yards from the broad, curving steps. After that, there was no more suggestion of inhospitality. The front doors, which were of enormous size and height, seemed to have been removed, and in the great domed hall beyond Sir Timothy was already receiving his guests. Being without wraps, the little party made an immediate entrance. Sir Timothy, who was talking to one of the best-known of the foreign ambassadors, took a step forward to meet them.
“Welcome,” he said, “you, the most unique party, at least, amongst my guests. Prince, may I present you to my daughter, Mrs. Hilditch? Lady Cynthia Milton and Mr. Ledsam you know, I believe.”
“Your father has just been preparing me for this pleasure,” the Prince remarked, with a smile. “I am delighted that his views as regards these wonderful parties are becoming a little more—would it be correct to say latitudinarian? He has certainly been very strict up to now.”
“It is the first time I have been vouchsafed an invitation,” Margaret confessed.
“You will find much to interest you,” the Prince observed. “For myself, I love the sport of which your father is so noble a patron. That, without doubt, though, is a side of his entertainment of which you will know nothing.”
Sir Timothy, choosing a moment's respite from the inflowing stream of guests, came once more across to them.
“I am going to leave you, my honoured guests from The Sanctuary,” he said, with a faint smile, “to yourselves for a short time. In the room to your left, supper is being served. In front is the dancing-gallery. To the right, as you see, is the lounge leading into the winter-garden. The gymnasium is closed until midnight. Any other part of the place please explore at your leisure, but I am going to ask you one thing. I want you to meet me in a room which I will show you, at a quarter to twelve.”
He led them down one of the corridors which opened from the hall. Before the first door on the right a man-servant was standing as though on sentry duty. Sir Timothy tapped the panel of the door with his forefinger.
“This is my sanctum,” he announced. “I allow no one in here without special permission. I find it useful to have a place to which one can come and rest quite quietly sometimes. Williams here has no other duty except to guard the entrance. Williams, you will allow this gentleman and these two ladies to pass in at a quarter to twelve.”
The man looked at them searchingly.
“Certainly, sir,” he said. “No one else?”
“No one, under any pretext.”
Sir Timothy hurried back to the hall, and the others followed him in more leisurely fashion. They were all three full of curiosity.
“I never dreamed,” Margaret declared, as she looked around her, “that I should ever find myself inside this house. It has always seemed to me like one great bluebeard's chamber. If ever my father spoke of it at all, it was as of a place which he intended to convert into a sort of miniature Hell.”
Sir Timothy leaned back to speak to them as they passed.
“You will find a friend over there, Ledsam,” he said.
Wilmore turned around and faced them. The two men exchanged somewhat surprised greetings.
“No idea that I was coming until this afternoon,” Wilmore explained. “I got my card at five o'clock, with a note from Sir Timothy's secretary. I am racking my brains to imagine what it can mean.”
“We're all a little addled,” Francis confessed. “Come and join our tour of exploration. You know Lady Cynthia. Let me present you to Mrs. Hilditch.”
The introduction was effected and they all, strolled on together. Margaret and Lady Cynthia led the way into the winter-garden, a palace of glass, tall palms, banks of exotics, flowering shrubs of every description, and a fountain, with wonderfully carved water nymphs, brought with its basin from Italy. Hidden in the foliage, a small orchestra was playing very softly. The atmosphere of the place was languorous and delicious.
“Leave us here,” Margaret insisted, with a little exclamation of content. “Neither Cynthia nor I want to go any further. Come back and fetch us in time for our appointment.”
The two men wandered off. The place was indeed a marvel of architecture, a country house, of which only the shell remained, modernised and made wonderful by the genius of a great architect. The first room which they entered when they left the winter-garden, was as large as a small restaurant, panelled in cream colour, with a marvellous ceiling. There were tables of various sizes laid for supper, rows of champagne bottles in ice buckets, and servants eagerly waiting for orders. Already a sprinkling of the guests had found their way here. The two men crossed the floor to the cocktail bar in the far corner, behind which a familiar face grinned at them. It was Jimmy, the bartender from Soto's, who stood there with a wonderful array of bottles on a walnut table.
“If it were not a perfectly fatuous question, I should ask what you were doing here, Jimmy?” Francis remarked.
“I always come for Sir Timothy's big parties, sir,” Jimmy explained. “Your first visit, isn't it, sir?”
“My first,” Francis assented.
“And mine,” his companion echoed.
“What can I have the pleasure of making for you, sir?” the man enquired.
“A difficult question,” Francis admitted. “It is barely an hour and a half since we finished dinner. On the other hand, we are certainly going to have some supper some time or other.”
Jimmy nodded understandingly.
“Leave it to me, sir,” he begged.
He served them with a foaming white concoction in tall glasses. A genuine lime bobbed up and down in the liquid.
“Sir Timothy has the limes sent over from his own estate in South America,” Jimmy announced. “You will find some things in that drink you don't often taste.”
The two men sipped their beverage and pronounced it delightful. Jimmy leaned a little across the table.
“A big thing on to-night, isn't there, sir?” he asked cautiously.
“Is there?” Francis replied. “You mean—?”
Jimmy motioned towards the open window, close to which the river was flowing by.
“You going down, sir?”
Francis shook his head dubiously.
“Where to?”
The bartender looked with narrowed eyes from one to the other of the two men. Then he suddenly froze up. Wilmore leaned a little further over the impromptu counter.
“Jimmy,” he asked, “what goes on here besides dancing and boxing and gambling?”
“I never heard of any gambling,” Jimmy answered, shaking his head. “Sir Timothy doesn't care about cards being played here at all.”
“What is the principal entertainment, then?” Francis demanded. “The boxing?”
The bartender shook his head.
“No one understands very much about this house, sir,” he said, “except that it offers the most wonderful entertainment in Europe. That is for the guests to find out, though. We servants have to attend to our duties. Will you let me mix you another drink, sir?”
“No, thanks,” Francis answered. “The last was too good to spoil. But you haven't answered my question, Jimmy. What did you mean when you asked if we were going down?”
Jimmy's face had become wooden.
“I meant nothing, sir,” he said. “Sorry I spoke.”
The two men turned away. They recognised many acquaintances in the supper-room, and in the long gallery beyond, where many couples were dancing now to the music of a wonderful orchestra. By slow stages they made their way back to the winter-garden, where Lady Cynthia and Margaret were still lost in admiration of their surroundings. They all walked the whole length of the place. Beyond, down a flight of stone steps, was a short, paved way to the river. A large electric launch was moored at the quay. The grounds outside were dimly illuminated with cunningly-hidden electric lights shining through purple-coloured globes into the cloudy darkness. In the background, enveloping the whole of the house and reaching to the river on either side, the great wall loomed up, unlit, menacing almost in its suggestions. A couple of loiterers stood within a few yards of them, looking at the launch.
“There she is, ready for her errand, whatever it may be,” one said to the other curiously. “We couldn't play the stowaway, I suppose, could we?”
“Dicky Bell did that once,” the other answered. “Sir Timothy has only one way with intruders. He was thrown into the river and jolly nearly drowned.”
The two men passed out of hearing.
“I wonder what part the launch plays in the night's entertainment,” Wilmore observed.
Francis shrugged his shoulders.
“I have given up wondering,” he said. “Margaret, do you hear that music?”
She laughed.
“Are we really to dance?” she murmured. “Do you want to make a girl of me again?”
“Well, I shouldn't be a magician, should I?” he answered.
They passed into the ballroom and danced for some time. The music was seductive and perfect, without any of the blatant notes of too many of the popular orchestras. The floor seemed to sway under their feet.
“This is a new joy come back into life!” Margaret exclaimed, as they rested for a moment.
“The first of many,” he assured her.
They stood in the archway between the winter-garden and the dancing-gallery, from which they could command a view of the passing crowds. Francis scanned the faces of the men and women with intense interest. Many of them were known to him by sight, others were strangers. There was a judge, a Cabinet Minister, various members of the aristocracy, a sprinkling from the foreign legations, and although the stage was not largely represented, there were one or two well-known actors. The guests seemed to belong to no universal social order, but to Francis, watching them almost eagerly, they all seemed to have something of the same expression, the same slight air of weariness, of restless and unsatisfied desires.
“I can't believe that the place is real, or that these people we see are not supers,” Margaret whispered.
“I feel every moment that a clock will strike and that it will all fade away.”
“I'm afraid I'm too material for such imaginings,” Francis replied, “but there is a quaintly artificial air about it all. We must go and look for Wilmore and Lady Cynthia.”
They turned back into the enervating atmosphere of the winter-garden, and came suddenly face to face with Sir Timothy, who had escorted a little party of his guests to see the fountain, and was now returning alone.
“You have been dancing, I am glad to see,” the latter observed. “I trust that you are amusing yourselves?”
“Excellently, thank you,” Francis replied.
“And so far,” Sir Timothy went on, with a faint smile, “you find my entertainment normal? You have no question yet which you would like to ask?”
“Only one—what do you do with your launch up the river on moonless nights, Sir Timothy?”
Sir Timothy's momentary silence was full of ominous significance.
“Mr. Ledsam,” he said, after a brief pause, “I have given you almost carte blanche to explore my domains here. Concerning the launch, however, I think that you had better ask no questions at present.”
“You are using it to-night?” Francis persisted.
“Will you come and see, my venturesome guest?”
“With great pleasure,” was the prompt reply.
Sir Timothy glanced at his watch.
“That,” he said, “is one of the matters of which we will speak at a quarter to twelve. Meanwhile, let me show you something. It may amuse you as it has done me.”
The three moved back towards one of the arched openings which led into the ballroom.
“Observe, if you please,” their host continued, “the third couple who pass us. The girl is wearing green—the very little that she does wear. Watch the man, and see if he reminds you of any one.”
Francis did as he was bidden. The girl was a well-known member of the chorus of one of the principal musical comedies, and she seemed to be thoroughly enjoying both the dance and her partner. The latter appeared to be of a somewhat ordinary type, sallow, with rather puffy cheeks, and eyes almost unnaturally dark. He danced vigorously and he talked all the time. Something about him was vaguely familiar to Francis, but he failed to place him.
“Notwithstanding all my precautions,” Sir Timothy continued, “there, fondly believing himself to be unnoticed, is an emissary of Scotland Yard. Really, of all the obvious, the dry-as-dust, hunt-your-criminal-by-rule-of-three kind of people I ever met, the class of detective to which this man belongs can produce the most blatant examples.”
“What are you going to do about him?” Francis asked.
Sir Timothy shrugged his shoulders.
“I have not yet made up my mind,” he said. “I happen to know that he has been laying his plans for weeks to get here, frequenting Soto's and other restaurants, and scraping acquaintances with some of my friends. The Duke of Tadchester brought him—won a few hundreds from him at baccarat, I suppose. His grace will never again find these doors open to him.”
Francis' attention had wandered. He was gazing fixedly at the man whom Sir Timothy had pointed out.
“You still do not fully recognise our friend,” the latter observed carelessly. “He calls himself Manuel Loito, and he professes to be a Cuban. His real name I understood, when you introduced us, to be Shopland.”
“Great heavens, so it is!” Francis exclaimed.
“Let us leave him to his precarious pleasures,” Sir Timothy suggested. “I am free for a few moments. We will wander round together.”
They found Lady Cynthia and Wilmore, and looked in at the supper-room, where people were waiting now for tables, a babel of sound and gaiety. The grounds and winter-gardens were crowded. Their guide led the way to a large apartment on the other side of the hall, from which the sound of music was proceeding.
“My theatre,” he said. “I wonder what is going on.”
They passed inside. There was a small stage with steps leading down to the floor, easy-chairs and round tables everywhere, and waiters serving refreshments. A girl was dancing. Sir Timothy watched her approvingly.
“Nadia Ellistoff,” he told them. “She was in the last Russian ballet, and she is waiting now for the rest of the company to start again at Covent Garden. You see, it is Metzger who plays there. They improvise. Rather a wonderful performance, I think.”
They watched her breathlessly, a spirit in grey tulle, with great black eyes now and then half closed.
“It is 'Wind before Dawn,'” Lady Cynthia whispered. “I heard him play it two days after he composed it, only there are variations now. She is the soul of the south wind.”
The curtain went down amidst rapturous applause. The dancer had left the stage, floating away into some sort of wonderfully-contrived nebulous background. Within a few moments, the principal comedian of the day was telling stories. Sir Timothy led them away.
“But how on earth do you get all these people?” Lady Cynthia asked.
“It is arranged for me,” Sir Timothy replied. “I have an agent who sees to it all. Every man or woman who is asked to perform, has a credit at Cartier's for a hundred guineas. I pay no fees. They select some little keepsake.”
Margaret laughed softly.
“No wonder they call this place a sort of Arabian Nights!” she declared.
“Well, there isn't much else for you to see,” Sir Timothy said thoughtfully. “My gymnasium, which is one of the principal features here, is closed just now for a special performance, of which I will speak in a moment. The concert hall I see they are using for an overflow dance-room. What you have seen, with the grounds and the winter-garden, comprises almost everything.”
They moved back through the hall with difficulty. People were now crowding in. Lady Cynthia laughed softly.
“Why, it is like a gala night at the Opera, Sir Timothy!” she exclaimed. “How dare you pretend that this is Bohemia!”
“It has never been I who have described my entertainments,” he reminded her. “They have been called everything—orgies, debauches—everything you can think of. I have never ventured myself to describe them.”
Their passage was difficult. Every now and then Sir Timothy was compelled to shake hands with some of his newly-arriving guests. At last, however, they reached the little sitting-room. Sir Timothy turned back to Wilmore, who hesitated.
“You had better come in, too, Mr. Wilmore, if you will,” he invited. “You were with Ledsam, the first day we met, and something which I have to say now may interest you.”
“If I am not intruding,” Wilmore murmured.
They entered the room, still jealously guarded. Sir Timothy closed the door behind them.