"You are Mr. Richardson, are you not?" he asked. There could be no doubt
of his agitation.
"I am; and I have been in this, my house, for some three-quarters of an
hour."
"They never told me," he groaned. "And I left particular instructions
--But perhaps you have already seen the mistress?"
"I have not. May I ask you to take me to her--since I have not the
pleasure of her acquaintance?"
"Cert'nly, sir. Oh, at once! She is in the drawing-room putting the best
face on it. Twice she has sent in to know if you have arrived, and I sent
word, 'No, not yet,' though it cut me to the 'eart."
"She is anxious to see me?"
"Desprit, sir."
"She thinks to avoid exposure, then?" said I darkly, keeping a set face.
"She 'opes, sir: she devoutly 'opes." He groaned and led the way.
"It may, after all, be a lesson to Mr. 'Erbert," he muttered as we reached
the landing.
"I fancy it's going to be a lesson to several of you."
"The things we've 'ad to keep dark, sir--the goings-on!"
"I can well believe it."
"I was in some doubts about you, sir--begging your pardon: but in spite of
the dress, sir--which gives a larky appearance, if I may say it--and
doubtless is so meant--you reassure me, sir: you do indeed. I feel the
worst is over. We can put ourselves in your 'ands."
"You have certainly done that," said I. "As for the worst being over--"
We were within the drawing-room by this time, and he plucked me by the
sleeve in his excitement, yet deferentially. "Yonder is the mistress,
sir--in the yellow h'Empire satin--talking with the gentleman in sky-blue
rationals. Ah, she sees you!"
She did. And I read at once in her beautiful eyes that while talking with
her partner she had been watching the door for me. She came towards me
with an eager catch of the breath--one so very like a cry of relief that
in the act of holding out her hand she had to turn to the nearest guests
and explain.
"It's Mr. Richardson--'George Anthony,' you know--who wrote _Larks in
Aspic!_ I had set my heart on his coming, and had almost given him up.
Why are you so cruelly late?" she demanded, turning her eyes on mine.
Her hand was still held out to me. I had meant to hold myself up stiffly
and decline it; but somehow I could not. She was a woman, after all, and
her look told me--and me only--that she was in trouble. Also I knew her
by face and by report. I had seen her acting in more than one exceedingly
stupid musical comedy, and wondered why 'Clara Joy' condescended to waste
herself upon such inanities. I recalled certain notes in her voice,
certain moments when, in the midst of the service of folly, she had seemed
to isolate herself and stand watching, aloof from the audience and her
fellow-actors, almost pathetically alone. Report said, too, that she was
good, and that she had domestic troubles, though it had not reached me
what these troubles were. Certainly she appeared altogether too good for
these third-rate guests--for third-rate they were to the most casual eye.
And the trouble, which signalled to me now in her look, clearly and to my
astonishment included no remorse for having walked into a stranger's
house and turned it up-side down without so much as a by-your-leave.
She claimed my goodwill confidently, without any appeal to be forgiven.
I held my feelings under rein and took her hand.
As I released it she motioned me to give her my arm. "I must find you
supper at once," she said quietly, in a tone that warned me not to
decline. "Not--not in there; we will try the library downstairs."
Down to the library I led her accordingly, and somehow was aware--by that
supernumerary sense which works at times in the back of a man's head--of
Horrex discreetly following us. At the library-door she turned to him.
"When I ring," she said. He bowed and withdrew.
The room was empty and dark. She switched on the electric light and
nodded to me to close the door.
"Take that off, please," she commanded.
"I beg your pardon? . . . Ah, to be sure!" I had forgotten my false nose.
"How did Herbert pick up with you?" she asked musingly. "His friends are
not usually so--so--"
"Respectable?" I suggested.
"I think I meant to say 'presentable.' They are never respectable by any
chance."
"Then, happily, it still remains to be proved that I am one of them."
"He seems, at any rate, to reckon you high amongst them, since he gave
your name."
"Gave my name? To whom?"
"Oh, I don't know--to the magistrate--or the policeman--or whoever it is.
I have never been in a police-cell myself," she added, with a small smile.
"Is Herbert, then, in a police-cell?"