"To drink the dose I will send you up to your room," he said quietly.
At that moment, as if by a flash-light suddenly turned on, Harry saw himself again meeting at the lodge gates this man for whom, at first sight, he had conceived so violent and instinctive an antipathy, and simultaneously the curious adventure in the search for Dr. Godfrey shone in his mind. What if, after all, Geoffrey was right, and he himself was alone in this house with a man such as his friend had pictured Mr. Francis to be, and his mysterious confederate physician, whose ways were so dark? The suspicions which had seemed to him so utterly beyond the horizon of credibility leaped suddenly nearer. And when he spoke,though he tried to make no alteration in his tone, even to himself his voice sounded unusual.
"I don't think I shall require any doses," he said. "I dare say I shall sleep all right. Thanks all the same."
"Ah, you don't trust me," said the doctor in the same quiet tone.
This exceeding frankness both pleased and offended Harry.
"Is it not a pity to say a thing like that?" he asked, "when you really have no warrant for it? To show you how wrong you are, I will take your dose with pleasure."
The doctor's grave face relaxed.
"That is right, Lord Vail," he said. "But do you think that your now consenting to take it proves that I was wrong? Might not a man consider that it showed I was right?"
Harry smiled also.
"A man of sufficient ingenuity can make plausible the most extravagant conclusions," he said, rather enjoying this tiny fencing match.
"True; we will not draw any at all, since there is no need," he said. "And now, with your leave, I will go up and see Mr. Francis again. I hope and trust I shall find him asleep."
"I shall be in the hall," said Harry; "please give me your report as soon as you have seen him."
Dr. Armytage went upstairs, and Harry lit a cigarette and waited his return. Dinner and the presence of this capable man had to a large extentquieted his jangled nerves, and he was conscious, more than anything, of a great weariness. The acuteness of his perplexities had for the moment worn off a little, and though their aching weight was no less, they pressed on him, so it seemed, without the fret of sharp edges. He resolutely set himself not to think of them, but rather of that exquisite point of happiness which was day by day coming nearer to him. Evie would be in England in less than a fortnight now; five weeks brought him to that day to which his whole life hitherto seemed to have been leading up. But suddenly the claws and teeth again recaptured him: Geoffrey was to have been his best man, and now— And with that his feverish mill-race of bewildering possibilities began again, and it was a relief when the doctor reappeared.
"Mr. Francis is sleeping, I am glad to tell you," he said. "Thanks. I will smoke one cigarette before I go upstairs; and when I go, you go too, if you please, Lord Vail. I have put your dose in your bedroom."
"Thanks. I am dead tired; one cigarette will see me."
The doctor settled himself in a chair.
"Yes, that tiredness is exactly what my dose will give a chance to," he said. "You are tired and excited—a horrible combination; and your excitement would certainly keep you awake. That I hope to remove by this sedative draught, and let your tiredness act naturally. But I must really congratulate you on your nerves. In the last tendays you have had enough escapes to last a lifetime, and, upon my word, you don't look used up. A very fine nervous constitution. Mr. Francis also used to have the same power of going through things that would have caused most men to break down utterly."
"Yes, he has been through awful trouble," said Harry, "and really he does not seem more than a man of sixty."
"Trouble of the most horrible kind," said the doctor. "May I ask you, Lord Vail, if Miss Aylwin is any relation to——"
"Yes," interrupted Harry; "her mother was Mrs. Harmsworth."
"I see you know the story. I was associated somewhat closely with it; I was, in fact, the doctor who gave evidence at the coroner's inquest."
Again Harry forgot his own perplexities.
"Ah, tell me about that," he said.
"There is little to tell. The conclusion I arrived at was that the death of Mr. Harmsworth might easily have been accidental or self-inflicted; that it was, in fact, the gun he carried which killed him. That, of course, was the crucial point. The nature of the wound appeared to me compatible with that interpretation."
"I knew that you were an old friend of my uncle's," said Harry. "But I did not know that your association with him was so intimate as that."
The doctor was silent a moment, and threw his smoked-out cigarette away.
"I tell you this," he said at last, "as a sort oftestimonial, recommendation, what you will: I came here as a stranger to you; you have received me with very cordial hospitality, and I present," he added, "my credentials."
Harry rose, and held out his hand.
"They are extremely satisfactory," he said. "And now for my dose and bed. You sleep in my uncle's sitting room, I think you said. I hope they have made you comfortable."
"I have everything," said the doctor. "By the way, speaking of your friend Mr. Langham, I may tell Mr. Francis that he has left, if I think it wise?"
"Certainly, if you wish."
"That he has gone to London?" suggested the doctor casually.
"As a matter of fact he has gone to his father's house for a few days, down near Sevenoaks. Lord Langham, you know."
"Ah, yes," said Dr. Armytage. "Good-night, my dear Lord Vail. I am convinced you will sleep well."
Half an hour afterward the house was dark and quiet. Harry had drained his dose, and was sleeping deeply and dreamlessly; Mr. Francis was not more wakeful. The night was warm and mellow after the heavy rain, and Dr. Armytage sat long at his window looking out with fixed, undeviating eyes into the blackness. At intervals, some real or fancied stir from the sick room would make him rise mechanically, and, crossing thefloor, look in on his patient; once Mr. Francis in his sleep called out, "Harry, Harry! take care!" in a strangling, agonized voice. But even then he did not wake, and the doctor returned again to his seat in the window and still gazed out into the night. The rain had ceased soon after sunset, and now the sky was nearly clear, and star in-wrought; in the east the moon would soon be rising. But he regarded not nor saw either stars or the climbing crescent.
At length a striking clock aroused him, and he got up.
"No, no, and a thousand times no!" he said to himself.
Dr. Armytage, despite Lady Oxted's round and uncompromising definition of him as a dexterous surgeon of sinister repute, proved himself during the next day or two to be far more intimately acquainted with the vital structure of the animal called man than is at all necessary for one who only concerns himself with dissection of artery and muscle, and the severing of bones. Under his wise and beneficent care Mr. Francis rapidly rose again to his accustomed surface, and, no less testimony to his skill, Harry once more looked the world squarely and courageously in the face. These inner and spiritual lesions require for their healing not only a skilful diagnosis, but a mind of delicate and certain touch, and of his two patients the doctor was inclined to think that Harry made the more flattering recovery. During these days he kept uncle and nephew studiously apart; he would allow no visits to the sick room, and communication was limited to messages passed to and fro by the doctor himself. Mr. Francis, on the one hand, was bidden to keep his bed for three days, and quiet was insisted on; quiet, on the other hand, was sternly forbidden toHarry. For him the prescription was to go out as much as possible, and busy himself with any employment—all were good—which he found congenial, and when indoors to apply himself slavishly to all the businesses which Mr. Francis had hitherto managed for him.
"Oh, you have plenty to do," said the doctor to this harassed young gentleman; "go and do some of it."
But among these things which had to be done was an affair of difficulty, the letter which must be written to Geoffrey. This, when he put his hand to it, Harry found to be a black, bitter business, and sheet after sheet was begun and abandoned. Had he realized it, he was attempting the impossible, for he had set himself to write a letter which should at once be thoroughly friendly, and yet spit on the allegations which his friend had made. The writer alone did not see that such a letter could not be written even by Solomon, Shakespeare, and the original serpent in conjunction. Thus, for a couple of hours one evening Harry wrote and tore, reducing wooden penholders to match wood, and quires of fair white paper to grist for the housemaid in her fire-lighting, yet still the envelope was no nearer to its postage stamp; and the dressing bell indeed showed him only a brimming waste-paper basket. He could not write this letter; here was the flat truth.
At this juncture the doctor entered the smoking room, which Harry had chosen to be thearena of these futile endeavours, and a glance at his clouded face seemed enough for him.
"It is difficult, I admit," he said. "Ah, you must not be offended with me, Lord Vail. I have guessed right. I know: we doctors have to be thought-readers. You have been making"—and his eye fell on the paper-basket—"many unsuccessful attempts to write to your friend. Perhaps I ought to have saved you that trouble."
Harry turned a dark face on him.
"I'm sure there is no secret about it," he said. "As like as not I should have told you. I can't write this letter, I just can't write it. Yet I must. But when I begin to tell Geoff the truth, that he has done a dastardly thing, and that I can never see him again, and that I love him just as much as ever—well—the whole thing becomes unreal at once."
"Yes, those are hard words to a friend," said the doctor.
"I know, and I'm not hard. I love that chap, I tell you. You don't know him; so much the worse for you, for you don't know the best old fool God ever made. I'm just hungry to see him, and I've got to tell him that he is a base cad. Oh, confound the whole round world! By the way, you said you should have spared me this trouble. What do you mean?"
Dr. Armytage took a chair close to the table where Harry was failing to write.
"Three days ago, Lord Vail, when I first arrived," he said, "I offered you a sleeping-draught,which you refused. I suggested that you refused it because you distrusted me. Tell me now, was I right in suggesting that?"
Harry looked straight, as his wont was, at the dark, secret face he had once thought so sinister. To him now it appeared only sad.
"What has that got to do with it?" he asked.
"Was that suggestion right?" repeated the doctor.
"Yes, quite," said the other frankly.
"Just so. Eventually you did trust me, or, at any rate, behaved as if you did, and you found your confidence not misplaced. You awoke, in fact, after a good night's rest. And now, if you grant that, you owe me the benefit of a doubt."
"Well?"
"I ask you to trust me again," said the doctor, "for the fact is I have already written to your friend myself, telling him not to expect a letter from you yet. I knew, I was completely certain, that you would find it impossible to write to him, and it seemed to me that if I wrote at once, as I did, it would save him some anxious hours. That is my confession."
Again Harry tried to feel what he told himself was a just resentment, but the sentiment that he raised in his mind was but a phantom. He ought, so he considered, to feel that his liberty was being tampered with, but this curiously self-possessed man appeared to have the gift of impeccable meddling. Then he laughed outright.
"I simply do not know what to say to you,"he said. "You take it upon yourself to interfere with affairs of mine that do not in the least concern you, and yet I don't really resent it."
"In that you are quite wise," remarked the doctor.
Harry threw down his pen.
"And not content with that, you patronize me, and pat me on the back," he said. "I am not at all sure that I intend to stand it. Pray, if I may so far interfere in your concerns, what did you say to Geoffrey?" he asked, with a show of spirit.
"I told him not to expect a letter from you yet," said the doctor. "I told him not to be impatient and wish for knots to be cut as long as there was the faintest hope of their being unravelled."
"Ah, there is not the faintest," broke in Harry.
"You too, then, acquiesce in the cutting. I hope your friend is more reasonable; less he can not be. You have no right to say, while the thing is yet so recent, that a reconciliation of your friend with Mr. Francis is impossible. And if that were possible it would comprehend, I take it, a reconciliation with you."
"Oh, you don't know Geoff, I tell you," said Harry. "He will never apologize. He is not given to rush at conclusions; but when he has concluded, he is more obstinate than all the beasts that perish. You waste your trouble if you expect him to recant."
The doctor rose.
"I repeat, it is too early to expect anything," he said. "A difficult situation takes time. If it does not take time, it is not difficult. Be sure of that. One thing alone I was certain of: that any letter from you, believing as you do so utterly in your uncle's absolute innocence—if I could put your feelings more strongly I would—could not tend to mend matters. It would only accentuate your estrangement—temporary, I hope—with your friend. And now have I your pardon for doing what I have done?"
"Not yet," said Harry. "What else did you say?"
"I said that you were as safe here as in the Bank of England. I asked him to be reasonable. Supposing his wild surmise was true, and that you had a very bitter enemy of your own blood in this house, how could he be so foolhardy as to make another attempt on you just now, when three had so conspicuously miscarried, and such suspicious circumstances were in Mr. Langham's knowledge? For the circumstances," he said, looking gravely at Harry, "were suspicious."
"I know they were," said Harry. "Poor old Geoff! Well, I couldn't have written that letter if I had tried till midnight."
He got up also, as the dinner gong sounded.
"That's dinner, and we are not yet dressed," he said. "But you were quite right to do it for me, Dr. Armytage," and frankness became him infinitely better than reserve. "And you mighthave added that I have a very good friend here, who looks after both my uncle and myself."
Dr. Armytage smiled rather grimly.
"I came to the conclusion that such a statement would not have increased his confidence," he said, "either in me or in your safety. There is no sense in gushing, particularly if one gushes about one's self."
That night, when the doctor made his last visit to Mr. Francis, he brought him as usual some small, affectionate message from Harry, and Mr. Francis yawned, for he was sleepy, and made no immediate reply. But in a moment or two he roused himself.
"My love, my very best love," he said, "and any convincing tenderness you please. By the way, how do you and he get on together? Is it very trying? I am afraid so. But it is of the utmost importance that you should gain Harry's confidence, that you should make him trust you."
"So you told me, and, without boasting, I think I may say that I have been fairly successful. I made a good beginning, you know, the first night I was here."
"Ah, yes, that sleeping-draught," said Mr. Francis appreciatively. "A little bromide of potassium you told me; quite simple and harmless. A charming drug, and an ingenious idea. Yes, Harry's consenting to take a sleeping-draught from your hands certainly showed that if he was disposed not to trust you, he was fightingthat inclination. And you have improved your advantage, dear Godfrey?"
"Yes, we are on excellent terms. And, to tell you the truth, I do not find it trying at all. Your nephew is both amiable and intelligent."
"Poor Harry!" said Mr. Francis softly. "Yes, his very simplicity has a certain charm, has it not? It is also a very convenient quality. Well, I am to go to sleep I suppose: I sleep so well now! And you intend to take me to London at the end of the week?"
"That was the proposal," said the doctor.
"And you, being an autocrat—for, indeed, doctors are the only autocrats we have left—insist on it. I assure you it will be the best plan. That young cub who left the other day has wits of a kind; he is rather sharp. It will quiet his outrageous suspicions, I think, if I leave Vail soon. I hope Harry will not be very dull alone," he added.
"He may not choose to stop here," said the doctor.
"It does not matter," said Mr. Francis. "He is certain to come back here before his marriage, to see that the house is quite ready to receive them after their honeymoon—'honeymoon! honeymoon!'" he repeated. "I count on that. By the way, do you call him Harry yet?"
"No."
"Dear Godfrey, how short and glum you are! I do not suppose I have had a monosyllabic replyfor ten years: they are so unnecessarily curt. But try to call him by his Christian name: it produces an admirable effect, and so cheaply. Practise saying, 'Harry, Harry,' when you are alone. You will find it makes it easier. Ah, well, I must go to sleep. Good-night, my dear man."
It was therefore definitely settled and announced to Harry that Mr. Francis and the doctor would leave for London at the end of the week. He would be the better, so said the doctor, for a change, for the very dark and autumnal weather which had settled down on Vail during the last day or two was a depressing influence, and he strongly recommended a week in London, where the little arrangements and excitements incident to settling into the flat would keep him agreeably occupied.
Mr. Francis dined downstairs on the last night before he left, and seemed his buoyant self again. During the afternoon incessant bubblings from the flute had come from his room, and that sound had been to Harry like the voice of some familiar friend returned. His uncle indeed had playfully prefaced his own entry into the hall, after the gong had sounded, with the tune of "See, the conquering Hero comes," a little thin on this solo instrument, but he had marched in time to it with an incomparable gaiety, with foot high-lifted and a pointed toe.
"And you, dear Harry," he asked, as they had seated themselves, after Mr. Francis had said grace, "what are your plans? I was half inclinedto rebel when our dear autocrat gave me my marching orders, and I heard that you, perhaps, would be left here alone, but my disaffection was quelled by a look. Has Godfrey given you any of his quelling looks, I wonder? But how long do you stop here?"
"Three or four days only, now," said Harry. "Then I go to the Oxteds' for a week, and come back here again by the beginning of November for ten days. After that, London till the 15th."
"Dear fellow, so near as that, so near as that, is it?" said Mr. Francis. "Ah, Harry!"—and he held out his hand to him. Then, seeing that the serious note was slightly embarrassing to the young man:
"Ah! good Templeton has given us the Luck again!" he cried, changing the subject abruptly. "Upon my word, the thing seems to grow brighter and more dazzling each time I see it.—This nephew of mine, I must tell you, my dear Godfrey, is a very foolish fellow in some ways. He almost—I may say almost, Harry—believes in that old legend. Really, a remarkable survival of superstition among the educated classes. I shall write to the Psychical Research about it. That amiable society collects nightmares and superstitions, I am told. A quaint hobby."
"I have drunk obediently to the Luck, night after night, have I not, Harry?" said the doctor.
"Of course. It is a rule of the house. By the way, let us set that point at rest. Dr. Armytage told me that you believed in the Luck, UncleFrancis. I simply couldn't credit it. You have always ridiculed me for even pretending to."
Mr. Francis laughed.
"Harry, that medical man can not keep a secret," he said. "No, my dear boy, I am only joking, but it is quite true that I have found myself wondering, after your extraordinary series of accidents early in this year, whether it were possible that there could be anything in it."
He paused a moment, and then went on quite naturally. "And these last three horrible escapes of yours," he said. "How strange! The ice house, frost; the gun, fire; the sluice, rain. There are more things in heaven and earth— Well, well!"
Here was proof, at any rate, that Mr. Francis knew how entirely Harry trusted him, and though at the thought of that awful scene between Geoffrey and his uncle the lad was startled for the moment at so direct a mention of that which had caused it, it was something of a relief to know that the subject did not cause Mr. Francis pain.
"Yes, taken all round, it would be sufficient to convince the most hardened sceptic," he said. "Poor old Luck! What an abominably futile business it has made of it all!"
Mr. Francis suddenly covered his face with his hand.
"Ah! it won't do to jest about," he said. "I spoke lightly, without thinking, but I find I can not quite stand it, dear Harry. It is too recent, too terrible!"
At this the talk veered to less intimate subjects, and before a couple of minutes were passed Mr. Francis was again in that exuberance of spirits which had made him play "See, the conquering Hero comes." He had always some contribution apposite and gay to make to the conversation, capable of fantastic development and garnished with pleasant conceits. But for him the meal would have somewhat languished, for, whether it was that Harry's old habit of reserve had returned to him, or that his thoughts were again a prey to the perplexities which his uncle's words might have recalled, he was unwontedly silent; while on the part of the doctor it seemed that a somewhat absent assent or dissent, and that only when directly appealed to, was all he had to give. But Mr. Francis was the man for the moment; he rose to the social emergency, and he told a hundred little anecdotes, diversified and amusing, and the growing silence of the other two was but a foil to the amazing agility of his tongue. But the most capacious measure is emptied at last, and about the time of dessert, spent and dropping shots, without effect, were the only remnant of that loquacious artillery. And it was in silence that the first glasses of port were poured out, and to break a notable hush that Harry rose.
"The Luck," he said. "I drink to the Luck."
The doctor and Mr. Francis rose to the toast, the latter with too eager an alacrity. His napkin,which he had flung on the table, caught his glass, and the wine was spilled.
On the same day that the doctor and Mr. Francis were travelling up from Vail, Geoffrey was also going to London, in consequence of a strangely unexpected summons. He had duly received the doctor's letter a week ago, and this had been followed three days later by a shorter note, informing him that he and Mr. Francis were leaving Vail for London on the Thursday following, and asking if Geoffrey would give the writer an opportunity of seeing him on a matter the importance of which could not be estimated. Dr. Armytage would be at his house that evening between five and seven, or, if these hours would not suit, he asked Geoffrey to name any time which was convenient to him after their arrival in London, and he would make a point of being in then, laying any other engagement he might have aside. Then followed a notable sentence:
"It occurs to me," wrote the doctor, "that you, following the thread of the suspicions of which Lord Vail has spoken to me, may see in this request a deep-laid scheme for insuring your presence in London on a given day and hour, and your certain absence from any other place. But I beg you to ask yourself why, if such were the case, I should have written to you at all. I may add that Mr. Francis Vail and I reach Paddington at 12.37 (midday) on Thursday. Be at the station, if you will, and assure yourself that we have left Vail."
So far the letter ran with the precision and orderliness of a despatch. Then followed the signature, and after the signature a strange postscript:
"I must see you—I must see you," read Geoffrey, and the writer's pen had spluttered with the underlining of the words.
No very long consideration was necessary, but knowing from Lady Oxted what he did of the doctor's antecedents, it was clearly possible that he might be placing himself in a position of some personal danger. To attempt to form any accurate idea of the scheme which might conceivably lie latent behind this letter was an idle task; but what he saw, and that without shadow of doubt, but with a certain exultation, was, that it was he above all men whom Mr. Francis had most reason to fear, and as long as he was at large with all the circumstantial evidence that he held, it was clearly very unlikely that any further attempt could be immediately contemplated against Harry, for the risk would be prodigious. So far, then, it looked that this letter might be a bold and cunning scheme to get him too into the power of this hellish man. On the other hand, he could not neglect the possible chance: the letter might conceivably be genuinely inspired. Looking at it coolly, as was his habit of mind, he thought that the balance of probability dipped to the sinister side: this Dr. Armytage was far more likely to be Mr. Francis's confederate than a disinterested doctor, or a foe. Yet there was a certain touch oftruth about the spluttering pen of the postscript, and Geoffrey's debate was but of short duration.
Then, with wonderment at his own slowness of wit, next moment the obvious safeguard struck him, and he telegraphed to the doctor at 32 Wimpole Street, saying that he would meet him at five o'clock at the junction of Orchard Street with Oxford Street. This was conveniently near to his own lodgings, where they could retire to hold conference if it appeared that there was reason for it, while it would be scarcely possible for any one, even with the legions of hell to back him, to spirit away an active young man from that populous thoroughfare without attracting public attention.
Geoffrey arrived in London late in the forenoon, and spent a couple of hours in writing out with the most minute particulars the account of all those incidents on which his suspicions were founded, and which had led to his scene with Mr. Francis. This he sealed up in an envelope, and wrote directions on the outside that, in case nothing more was heard from him till Monday, midday, it was to be opened. He put this into a larger envelope, addressed it with a short note to his father, and posted it. Finally, before he set out for his rendezvous at the corner of Orchard Street, he slipped a loaded revolver into his breast pocket, to guard against the very remote possibility of his being attacked in his own rooms. Its presence there, though not unattended with qualms, for he was something of a stranger to thisbranch of firearms, yet filled him with a secret glee of adventure.
Punctually at five he arrived at the appointed corner, and a few moments' observation of the shifting and changing crowd was enough to enable him to single out a man spare and dark who also lingered there. It was evident, too, that he had observed Geoffrey, no less than Geoffrey had observed him, and, on the third or fourth occasion that their eyes met, the man crossed the street to him.
"Mr. Geoffrey Langham?" he asked, and to Geoff's silent gesture of assent, "I am Dr. Armytage."
They turned and walked a little way down Oxford Street before either spoke again. Then said the doctor:
"Your plan was reasonable, that we should meet in some public place: it was natural that you should not wish to trust yourself to my house. But I would suggest that if we are to talk in public, we get into a hansom, or I should prefer a four-wheeler."
"Why?" asked Geoffrey.
"Because we are dealing, or I hope shall soon be dealing, with a very subtle man, who for aught I know may be watching either you or me."
Geoffrey wheeled round quickly.
"Come to my rooms in Orchard Street," he said—"No. 12. I will walk on the other side of the road."
The distance was but a few dozen yards, andthree minutes later the two were in the sitting room, which overlooked the street. Geoffrey pointed to a seat, and waited for the other to open the conversation.
"I repeat," said the doctor, "that your amendment of our plan was reasonable, for you have little reason to trust me."
"It seems to me so," said Geoffrey. "I thought it wise to take that and other precautions. But it was you who asked for this interview. Kindly tell me what you have to say."
"It is told in two words," said Dr. Armytage. "Your friend Lord Vail has, by almost a miracle of luck, escaped from three well-devised schemes against his life. Thrice has Mr. Francis failed. We can not expect such luck to continue."
Not a muscle of Geoffrey's face moved.
"You mean he will make another attempt," he said.
"He will certainly make another attempt."
Geoffrey's hands were playing with a box of cigarettes on the table, opening and shutting the lid in a careful and purposeless manner.
"Here, smoke," he said, "and give me a minute to think."
The doctor took a cigarette, lit it, and waited. He had smoked it half down before Geoffrey spoke again.
"You see my position," he said at length. "There is no harm that I can see in my telling you that I know how intimate you are with Mr. Francis. I am wondering whether possibly Imay be aiding him and you by seeing you; that is the truth. For your intimacy with Mr. Francis was very close as long as three-and-twenty years ago—at the time, let us say, of the violent death of Harold Harmsworth. That is so, I believe."
"Certainly," said the doctor. "I received, I may tell you, two thousand pounds for the service I did Mr. Francis at the coroner's inquest."
Geoffrey looked up quickly.
"Ah! that sounds genuine," he said.
"About that you must decide for yourself," said the doctor.
Geoffrey snapped down the lid of the cigarette box, took out of his coat pocket the revolver he had put there, and laid it on the table close to the doctor's hand.
"I have decided, you see, to trust you," he said. "Perhaps my parting with that revolver is an unconvincing proof, for it would certainly be incautious of you to shoot me here and now, but I can think of nothing better. There it is, anyhow."
Dr. Armytage took up the revolver and opened it.
"Six chambers, all loaded, I perceive," he said. "Let me return it you as I received it. I have no use for it."
Geoffrey took it from his hand and put it back in the table drawer.
"And now let us talk," he said.
An extraordinary look of relief crossed thedoctor's face; the whole man seemed to brighten to the eye.
"I hardly dared hope you would trust me," he said, "and your affection for your friend must have been strong. But let us waste no more time. Yes, your suspicions were quite correct. Harry Vail has no bitterer enemy than his uncle. He has made no less than three attempts to put him out of the way."
"You speak as if you were sure of it," said Geoffrey.
"I am; but what evidence have we? It would not take a barrister ten minutes to tear it to shreds, for it is entirely circumstantial, and weak at that. There is the devilish cunning of the man. Again, if we are to save Harry, we must save him in spite of himself, for he believes not a word of it, and we deal with a man who is cunning and utterly unscrupulous—far more cunning, probably, than you and I put together. But we have one great advantage over him."
"What is that?" asked Geoffrey.
"The fact that he counts on me to be his accomplice. If we succeed, I am to have ten thousand pounds."
At these words, distrust again flared high in Geoffrey's mind, refusing to be darkened—a beacon.
"God give you your portion in hell," he cried, "if you are playing a double game!"
The doctor showed no sign of resentment, but he did not immediately reply.
"This will not do at all," he said at length. "Either you trust me, or you do not. If you do not, I will go: we are but wasting words. I may remind you, however, that if I am playing a double game, my conduct in wishing to see you is utterly unaccountable; but if not, that it will be barely possible for me alone to save your friend, for it is my strong impression that Mr. Francis's man—Sanders, is it not?—will help his master. Come, which is it to be?"
"Yes, I trust you," said Geoffrey in great agitation. "I ought never to have said that. Please go on."
"I can give you no certain details yet," said the doctor, "but the attempt will be made between Harry's return to Vail from Lady Oxted's, where he goes in a few days, and his moving to London before the marriage. So much I have gathered from Mr. Francis. It is, you will understand, of the utmost importance to him that the marriage should never be consummated. More exactly than that I can not tell you, but I want you, in any case, to hold yourself in readiness to come to Vail, or anywhere else, at a moment's notice, and at a word from me."
"Yes, I promise that," said Geoffrey.
"The particulars I can not give you," continued the doctor, "for I do not yet know them; indeed, I doubt whether Mr. Francis has yet worked them out himself. But to-day, as we were coming up in the train, he blew on his flute a long time, and then said suddenly to me: 'I havea new hobby; the properties of certain powerful drugs. We will have some great talks about drugs when we are in London.' From this I gathered that he means to poison Harry."
"The damned old man!" exclaimed Geoffrey.
"Precisely. Now, his motive you know or guess: he is heir. But from what I have seen of him lately, he sets less store by that than on the fact that Harry's death will give him the Luck."
"The Luck! He doesn't believe in the Luck!" cried Geoffrey. "I have heard him laugh at Harry a hundred times for pretending to believe in it."
"There you are wrong," said the doctor. "I should be rather tempted to say that the Luck is the only thing in the world he does believe in. I tell you this for an obvious reason: he is not sane on the point; we are dealing with a monomaniac, and he is more to be feared than a sane man. He will run greater risks to secure his end. But it is late: I must go. During the next week I shall certainly learn the whole of Mr. Francis's plans, for I shall refuse to help him in any way unless I know all. Good-bye. You will please stop in London till you hear from me."
Geoffrey got up.
"Tell me," he said, "when did you determine to help Harry?"
"I do not think that if I told you, you would trust me the more," said the doctor.
"I assure you I shall not trust you less."
Dr. Armytage took his umbrella from the corner.
"A fortnight ago only," he said, "on the day I first saw Harry. Think of me as you will, so long as you do what I tell you. I really care very little about anything else, even whether you trust or mistrust me, provided only you behave as if you trusted me. Yes, till I saw him, and spent the evening with him on the day you left; prescribed for his agitated nerves, and gave him a sleeping-draught——"
"I'm glad I didn't know that before," said Geoffrey frankly.
"It might certainly have caused you some uneasiness. But not till then did I decide to save him if I could, and not to do—the other thing. And every day strengthened my decision, and the thought of the ten thousand pounds grew less attractive. My reason is hard to give you, convincingly, at any rate. It was due, perhaps, to a great charm and attractiveness which Lord Vail possesses; it was due, perhaps, to an idea in my own mind that I would not commit murder. That sounds a little crude, does it not? But we are dealing with crudities. Good-bye again."
Geoffrey held out his hand.
"I trust you," he said, "quite completely. And so, it seems, does Harry. I do not believe that we are both wrong."
Dr. Armytage turned quickly away without a word. A moment afterward the street door banged behind him.
Harry was sitting cross-legged on the hearth rug after dinner, poking the fire in an idiotic manner with the tongs. Gun cotton would have smouldered out under so illiterate a stroke. He was also talking with about equal vivacity and vacuity to Lady Oxted and Evie, but while his conversation was not more than difficult to bear, his poking of the fire was quite intolerable. Lady Oxted got swiftly and silently up from her chair, and, in the manner of a stooping hawk, took the instrument from him.
"We can attend better, dear Harry," she said, "to your most interesting conversation if you do not distract our minds by making a bayonet of improper fire irons. You can do that after we have gone to bed."
"They are improper," said Harry, "but my sense of delicacy forbade my telling you so. How a respectable woman like you could tolerate their presence in the house has been more than I was able to imagine. But now the ice is broken— Oh, I never told you about the ice house! 'More I did."
Lord Oxted looked up from the evening paperwhich he was reading distractedly but diligently, and made a bee line for the door. His exit, though made without protest, was somewhat marked. He had no manners, as his wife often told him.
"The ice house," said Harry, as if he were giving out a text to a diminishing congregation, and a spicy emphasis was required to retain the rest, "and the gun, and the sluice."
The shadow of Lord Oxted lingered a moment in the doorway at this alluring selection, but immediately disappeared on the next words: "I'll make your blood run cold!"
"Has the Luck been singing its nursery rhymes?" asked Lady Oxted, uncertain what to do with that white elephant, the tongs.
"Singing!" cried Harry, digging the shovel into the fire. "Singing quo' she! My good woman, I can and will a tale unfold which, if you have tears, prepare to shed them now," said he, with a felicitous air.
Lady Oxted annexed the shovel also. Thus there were two white elephants.
"I am not the washerwoman, Harry," she remarked with reason.
"No, dear aunt," said he, growing suddenly grave. "And if I hadn't been so absurdly happy to-night, I shouldn't have made a joke of it, for, indeed, it was no joke. Anyhow, the doctor congratulated me on my admirable nerves."
"Some people when they prepare to tell a story," said Lady Oxted, "begin at the beginning.Others—this is without prejudice—begin at the end and work laboriously and slowly backward. Let me at least ask you, Harry, not to be slow. Tell us about the doctor, as we are to go backward. Did his name begin with an A?"
"Quite right," said Harry, "and it went on with an R."
Lady Oxted dropped her white elephants on the carpet and sat down by Evie.
"Armytage?" she asked, and the fooling was gone from her voice.
"Right again. You had much better tell the whole story for yourself, hadn't you?"
"No; when other people begin to talk about the Luck, I take no part in the conversation," said she, "except, at least, when Geoffrey is here, and then I talk of bears and bulls."
The Harry who had played bayonet with the tongs had by this time vanished; vanished also were the flying skirts of farce, and in absolute silence on the part of his audience, and in gravity on his own, he told them the three adventures, narrating only the salient facts, and alluding neither directly nor otherwise to Geoffrey or his uncle. But while his tale was yet young, Evie crossed from the sofa where she had been sitting with Lady Oxted and joined Harry on the hearth rug. One hand held her fan, the other was on her lap. Of the latter Harry easily possessed himself, and the tale of the gun was told with it in his. But as he spoke of the raking gash that riddled the cornice and ceiling of the gunroom, it was suddenly withdrawn and laid on his shoulder.
"O Harry, Harry!" she murmured.
He turned and stopped, spontaneously responsive.
"My darling," he said, "I ought never to have told you. Only I could not help telling you some time, and why not now? Was it not better to tell you like this, making no confidence of it?"
If ever a word ought to have carried the weight of a hint, the word was here. But Lady Oxted showed not the slightest sign of following her husband, or saying she must write two notes.
"Go on, Harry," she said. "We are waiting. So the gun went off?"
But Harry turned to the girl.
"It is with you," he said. "Will you have the third adventure or not? Simply as you wish. Here am I, anyhow."
"Yes, tell us," she said.
At the end Lady Oxted rose crisply.
"I never heard of such impotent magic in all my life," she said. "Really, Harry, if you must tell us supernatural experiences in the evening, we have a right to expect to be pleasantly frightened. But I have never been less frightened. You whistled your way into an ice house; you took up a gun carelessly; you stood on a piece of unsafe stonework.—If I were you, Evie, I should buy him a nice leading-rein."
These brutalities were effective, and banished the subject, and, without pausing to comment orlet others comment, Lady Oxted sent for her husband, and they sat down to a table of bridge.
"The only thing I insist on," he said, "is that my wife shall be my partner. Her curious processes of thought, when she is engaged in this kind of brain work, are a shade less disconcerting and obscure to me than they would be to others.Aimer c'est tout comprendre.And if I do not quite understand them all," he added, as he cut for deal, "I understand more than anybody else.—Eh, dear Violet?"
Lady Oxted's brow was always clouded when she played bridge, and to-night the blackness of the thunderstorm that sat there was not appreciably denser than usual. She played with a curious and unfortunate mixture of timorousness when the declaration was with her, and a lively confidence in the unparalleled strength of her partner's hand when the declaration was passed to her. Thus at the end of two hours, as these methods to-night were more marked than usual, the house of Oxted was sensibly impoverished. But with the rising from the card table her disquieted looks showed no betterment, and her husband offered consolation.
"We can easily sell the Grosvenor Square house," he said, "if it is that which is bothering you, Violet; and if that is not enough we can give up coffee after dinner, and have no parties. The world is too much with us."
"And with the proceeds we can buy a handbook on bridge," said she with spirit. "I willgive it you for a present at Christmas, Bob. Let us go to bed."
Lady Oxted employed, in the almost daily conduct of her life, methods which she characterized as diplomatic. A less indulgent critic than herself might have labelled them with a shorter and directer word, yet not have felt that he was harsh, for the diplomatic methods did not exclude what we may elegantly term evasions of the truth. To-night, for instance, she talked with Evie for a few minutes only in her bedroom, and exacted a promise that she would go to bed at once, for she looked very tired. For herself she would have it known that her head was splitting, that if she got influenza again she would turn atheist. With these immoderate statements she secured herself from interruption, and went, not to bed, but to the smoking room, where she found Harry alone. The rustling of her dress made him look up quickly, and the most undiplomatic disappointment was evident on his face.
"No, I am not Evie," remarked this clear-sighted lady. "She is tired and has gone to bed, so I came for a chat with you. Dear Harry, it is so nice to see you again! But what terrible adventures you have been through! I want to hear of them more particularly, but I thought it would frighten Evie to talk of them longer. That is why I was abrupt to you."
"And so she is tired! Diplomacy?" said Harry.
"Yes, just a touch of diplomacy," assentedLady Oxted, "for she looked scared and frightened. Now were you alone when all these things happened, or was Dr. Armytage there? And how did Dr. Armytage come to be at Vail at all?"
"He came to Vail," said Harry, "on the evening of the third affair, the breaking of the sluice. I telegraphed for him because I was frightened about my uncle. He is liable, you know, to cardiac attacks, and I was afraid of one coming on."
"He was naturally agitated at your series of escapes," said Lady Oxted.
"Naturally," said Harry.
Lady Oxted rose with some impatience, and threw diplomacy aside.
"Your efforts at dissimulation are pitiable, Harry," said she. "If you won't tell me what happened, say so: I am going to fish no more."
Harry did not immediately reply, and Lady Oxted continued.
"Seriously speaking," she said, "I think I ought to know. If there is nothing more, if your conscience allows you to say that there is nothing to tell, I am content. If you can not say that, I think you ought to tell me."
"Do you not think that you are putting an unfair pressure on me?" asked Harry.
"No, for you are no longer only your own master. You must consider not only yourself, but Evie. In her mother's absence I have a certain duty toward her. I do not ask you from curiosity, but because of the relations in which both you and I stand to her. You have withinthe last few weeks been in three positions of extreme personal danger. Can you, however vaguely, account for this? Have there been no suspicious circumstances of any kind which might lead any one to think that these were not entirely accidents? You say that Geoffrey was in the house on all these occasions. Did he take it all as lightly as you seem to?"
"I would rather not bring Geoffrey into it," said Harry.
"Have you quarrelled?"
"Yes, I suppose you may say that we have quarrelled," he replied.
"Harry, why will you not tell me, and save my asking you all these questions? I intend to go on asking them. Was your quarrel with Geoffrey connected in any way with these accidents?"
"Oh, give me a minute!" cried Harry. "I want to make up my mind whether I am going to tell you or not. I suppose, if I did not, you would go to Geoff."
"Certainly I should," said Lady Oxted promptly, although this had not occurred to her.
"Well, it is better that I should tell you than he," said Harry, and without more words he told her all that he had purposely left unsaid, from the mistaken direction which had sent him to the ice house instead of the summerhouse, down to the scene in the smoking room when he had parted with Geoffrey. She heard him in silence without question or interruption, and when he had finished, still she said nothing. Apt and ready asshe was for the ordinary social emergency, she could frame nothing for this. She could not say what she thought, outspokenly like Geoffrey, for Harry's sake; she would not say what she did not think, in spite of her diplomatic tendencies, for her own.
At last the silence became portentous, and Harry broke it.
"Have I then lost another friend in addition to Geoffrey?" he said, in a voice that was not very steady. He could not have given her a better lead.
"Ah! do not say things like that, Harry," she said. "You do not think it possible, in the first place, and even if you did it would be no part of wisdom to say it. But I tell you frankly that, though Geoffrey seems to me to have spoken most hastily and unwisely, yet I can understand what he felt. There are, I don't deny that I see it, many curious circumstances about all these adventures, which lend reasonableness—pardon me—to his suspicions."
"I know—I know all that," said Harry, "but I find it a sheer impossibility to believe them in any degree at all. Geoffrey's suspicions are out of the question. That being so, I can not away with what he has done, with the speaking to my uncle like that; I can not away with that condition of mind to which, however plausible the idea, the idea was possible."
Lady Oxted was a quick thinker; she knew, moreover, that to decide wrong was better thannot to decide at all; and before Harry had finished speaking, she was determined on her line of action. Geoffrey, she rightly guessed, had at least as much influence with Harry as herself, yet even Geoffrey, in all the heat and horror of these adventures, had been powerless to move him. Her chance, then, speaking at this cooler distance, had scarcely the slightest prospect of success, and secret coalition with Geoffrey was evidently preferable to open collision with Harry.
"I see—I quite see," she said; "but, O Harry, do not throw away a friend lightly! Geoff is a good fellow, and you must remember that it was for your sake that he risked and suffered a quarrel with you. Friends are not so common as sparrows! You will not find them under every house-roof. Don't do anything in a hurry: wait. No situation is hopeless until you have given time a chance to work. Don't write, if you have not already done so, any angry letter; or worse, any dignified, calm, world-without-end letter. It is so easy to make an estrangement permanent! You can always do that."
"I haven't written at all," said Harry. "I tried to, but I could not do it. There is no hurry; besides, Geoffrey will not expect to hear from me; Dr. Armytage wrote to tell him not to."
Lady Oxted just succeeded in suppressing the exclamation of surprise that was on her lips. "That was very kind of him, and wise as well," she said.
"He is both the one and the other," saidHarry. "He was down at Vail a week. I liked him immensely. But I don't mind telling you that I was glad to get away, to part with him, with Uncle Francis, with the Luck for a time. I felt as if there were some occult conjuncture against me, and I didn't like it. I had continually to keep a hold on myself, to make an effort not to be scared. But here I am being beautifully relaxed. I feel secure—yes, that's the word."
Lady Oxted continued her diplomatic course.
"There is nothing so catching as superstition," she said, "and all the evening, since you told Evie and me about it, I have been wondering— Oh, it must be all nonsense!" she cried.
"You mean the Luck?" asked Harry. "Is Saul also among the prophets?"
"Yes, I mean the Luck. How does the nursery rhyme go? Fire and frost and rain, isn't it? Well, there they all were, and it is no use denying it."
"Not the slightest," said Harry.
"Certainly it is very strange. Harry, I don't like the Luck at all. It's uncanny. I wish you would smash it, or throw it into the sea. Yet, somehow, I feel as if you were safe as long as you are here, away from it. I wish you would stop here till your marriage. Then you go away, you see, for six weeks, and in the meantime some burglar might be kind enough to steal it."
Harry shook his head.
"No, I put the good things it has brought me much higher than the evil," he said. "And it isgoing to bring me another very good thing—the best. After that, if you like, I will smash it."
"Well, stay here till your marriage, anyhow."
"I must go down to Vail once, to see that they have finished up. The house was upside down when I was there. But, barring a couple of days then, there is nothing I should like better. You will have nearly a month of me, though. Consider well."
"Then stop till I tell you I can not bear you any longer. I am a candid woman, and fond of giving pain, and I promise to speak out. Dear me, it is nearly one! I must go to bed, and if I dream of the Luck it will be your fault."
Lady Oxted did not dream at all for a very long time that night: she was at her wits' end what to do. All Scotland Yard, with all the detectives of improbable fiction thrown in to aid, were powerless to help, for the evidence against Mr. Francis in Harry's story, though conclusive to her own mind, would weigh lighter than chaff in cross-examination. And no further evidence was procurable until Mr. Francis made another attempt, and at the thought she shuddered. What, too, was that sinister doctor doing at Vail? What was the meaning of the seeming friendliness in averting a final rupture between Harry and Geoffrey? He had written, according to his own account, a letter to Geoffrey which should avoid this, but what did his letter really contain? It was far more likely that he had told him that the rupture was final, for clearly he and Mr. Franciswould not want to risk the possibility of Geoffrey, who knew all, and whose attitude was so avowedly hostile, coming down to Vail again. The only consolation was that Harry for the present was safe, and that she could go up to London next day and see Geoffrey. But what could they do even together? What defence was possible when the blow might fall at any moment from any unsuspected quarter?
By degrees, as she paced her room, a kind of clearness came to her. Mr. Francis's design was evident: he had shown his hand by the nature of his earlier attempts, in which he had tried to stop Harry's marriage. Then, in the miscarriage of that, he had turned to directer deeds—fouler they could scarcely be, but of more violent sort. There had been a species of awful art in his doings; he had taken, with a fiend's gusto and pleasure in the ingenuity of it (so she pictured), Harry's avowed superstition in the power of the Luck, to compass his ends. As a musician takes a subject, and on this theme works out a fugue; as an artist paints a portrait in a definite preconceived scheme of colour, so had Mr. Francis taken the Luck, and the dangers it was thought to bring to its possessor: these he had elaborated, put into practical shape. It must have dwelt in his mind like a lunatic's idea; not only, as in the case of the gun, did he make his opportunity, but, as in the affair of the ice house, he must have been alert, receptive, instinctively and instantaneously turning to his ends whatever chance put in his way.
This thought brought her a certain feeling of relief on the one hand, but on the other it added an indefinite terror. No man morally sane could devise and steadily prosecute so finished a scheme; the very thoroughness and consistency of the three attempts stamped them as the work of a madman. Nine tenths of the blood murderously shed on the earth was to be put down to a spasm of ungovernable anger and hate, which at the moment possessed the murderer; this long premeditation, this careful following of one idea by which frost, fire, and rain should be the direct causes of Harry's death, was not to be attributed—so devilish and so finished was the application—to a sane author. Here lay the consolation: her shuddering horror of the white-haired old gentleman, with his flute-playing and his boyish yet courtly manner, was a little assuaged, and gave way to mere human pity for a mind deranged. But simultaneously, as if with a clash of cymbals, her fear of him, defenceless, bewildered, broke out: that cunning of a madman was far more formidable than the schemings of a sane man. He would soon, maddened by failure, reck nothing of what happened to him, so that he attained his object.
What, then, looking at it thus, was his object? The mere death of Harry, merely the lust for blood? That seemed hardly possible. She could not put him down as a homicidal maniac, since it seemed that he had no desire to kill for killing's sake, and the world was not yet staggered with a catalogue of subtle, undetected murders. Norwas the explanation that he wished to inherit Vail and its somewhat insufficient revenues more satisfactory. He was old; he had, so far as any one could guess, no wish for more of this world's goods than he possessed under Harry's generosity; the motive could scarcely be here. Then in a flash a more likely solution struck her. The Luck—perhaps he wanted the Luck! A year of ownership, so she told herself, had already affected even Harry's sanity in this regard. What if here was a man, old and already poised on the edge of his dug grave, who all his life long had dreamed of and itched for it, believing God knew what was in store for its possessor? This, she guessed, was the taint of blood, the same that so mysteriously, though uncriminally, possessed Harry. Here, perhaps, was the cause, not the fire and the frost and the rain, but the belief in their perils, coupled with the belief in great and unwonted good fortune which the possession of it gave. Mr. Francis had more than once, in her hearing, laughed at Harry for his fantastic allegiance to the heirloom, but this, if anything, confirmed Lady Oxted in her theory. This cunning was of consistency with the rest.
Long since she had dismissed her maid, and tired with fruitless thought, and baffled with but dimly cipherable perils, she finished her undressing and blew out the lights. But through all the dark hours she was clutched by the night-hag. Now the Luck appeared to her like the Grail in Parsifal, emitting an unearthly radiance, but evenas she gazed she would suddenly be stricken with the knowledge that the brightness of it was not of heavenly but of diabolic birth; a piercing light emanated therefrom, but of infernal red, and voices from the pit moaned round it. Then it would be gone, and for a little while a wriggling darkness succeeded, but slowly the break in the blackness which heralded its coming would begin to shine again and grow intolerably bright; faint lines where it would shortly appear, stretched themselves upon the fields of vision, growing momentarily more distinct, but instead of the Luck, there came, first in outline, then in awful and indelible vividness, the features of Mr. Francis, now very kind and gentle, now a mask of tormented fury.
Next morning she found that her resolve to see Geoffrey without delay had not been diminished by the scattered phantoms of the night, and some lame toothache excuse served her end. She did not certainly know whether he was in London or not, and for safety's sake she sent him two telegrams—the one to his father's house in Kent, the second to his lodging in Orchard Street—both bidding him come to lunch that day in Grosvenor Square without fail. The one addressed to London found him first, since, after his interview with Dr. Armytage, he had stayed on there; and this, followed after an hour's interval by the other sent on from his father's house, constituted a call of urgency. He therefore obeyed the summons, leaving a note for Dr. Armytage, as had beenagreed between them, to say when he should be in again, and where he had gone.
The conference began after lunch. Each found it in a measure a relief to be able to confide the secret haunting sense of peril to another. Each, on the other hand, was horrified to find that some one else shared the apprehensions each still hoped might be phantasmal. Geoffrey, on his part, had his account of his dealings with Dr. Armytage to add to Lady Oxted's information; she her own conviction that they were dealing with a man not morally sane, whose one desire was to have and to hold the Luck. To her, this alliance with Dr. Armytage, of which Geoffrey told her, seemed but a doubtful gain.
"What does one know of him?" she asked. "Nothing that is not bad. Mr. Francis could not have chosen a more apt or a more unscrupulous tool. He got two thousand pounds, you tell me, for his services in connection with the Harmsworth case: what will he not do for ten? Oh, we may be dealing with a cunning of which we have no conception! What if all this was told you simply to blind you? Nothing can be more probable, and how admirably it has succeeded! Already you trust the man—their object, as far as you are concerned, is gained."
"I had to trust him or distrust him," said Geoffrey, "and I chose to do the former. If I had chosen the latter, the door would have closed on him, and I do not see that we should be any better off than we are now. If he is dealingstraight with us, we have an immense advantage in knowing all he knows of Mr. Francis's plans; if he is not, he can, at the most, give us misleading information, which is not worse than none at all."
Lady Oxted considered this in silence a moment.
"Yes, that is true," she said; "yet, somehow, my flesh misgives me to be allied with that man. O Geoffrey, is it because this awful Luck has cast a spell on us that we imagine Harry surrounded by these intimate and immediate perils? Are our fears real? Let us tell ourselves that we are ordinary people, living in an age of prose and police-men; we are not under the Doges! This is the nineteenth century," she said, rising, "or the twentieth, if you will; we look out on Grosvenor Square—a hansom is driving by."
She stopped suddenly.
"I am wrong," she said; "it is not driving by. It has stopped at the door. And Dr. Armytage has rung the bell. Oh, what shall I do?" she cried. "God in heaven! what are we to do? What has he come to tell us?"
Geoffrey got up.
"Now quietly, quietly, Lady Oxted," he said. "He has come on a matter of importance, or he would have waited till I returned to Orchard Street. I have decided to trust him, and I suggest, therefore, that we see him together. It is our best chance; it may be our only one."
"But I don't trust him," said Lady Oxted."I distrust him from head to heels." And she bit her finger nails, a thing she had not done since the days of the schoolroom.
"Very well; then I shall run on my own lines," and he got up to leave the room.
"Wait, Geoffrey," she said. "You are absolutely determined?"
"Absolutely."
"I yield, then. You, at any rate, have some plan, and I have none.—Yes, show Dr. Armytage in," she said to the man who had brought his card.