I
"Well, Harry, my boy, and what's the latest news from Venice?"
Harry Lorian stretched his long legs and lay back in his chair.
"I had a letter from the governor this morning, Colonel. He appears
to be filling his portfolio with studies of windows and doorways and
stair-rails and the other domestic necessities dear to his architectural
soul!"
Colonel Reynor laughed in his short, gruff way, as my friend, Lorian,
gazing sleepily about the quaint old hall in which we sat, but always
bringing his gaze to one point--a certain door--blew rings of smoke
straightly upward.
"I suppose," said our host, the Colonel, "most of the material will be
used for the forthcoming book?"
"I suppose so," drawled Lorian, glancing for the twentieth time at
the yet vacant doorway by the stair-foot. "The idea of architects and
artists and other constitutionally languid people, having to write
books, fills my soul with black horror."
"He had a glorious time with our old panelling, Harry," laughed the
Colonel, waving his cigar vaguely toward the panelled walls and nooks
which gradually were receding into the twilight.
"Yes," said my friend. "He was here quite an unconscionable time--even
for an old school chum of the proprietor. I hope you counted the spoons
when he left!"
Lorian's disrespectful references to Sir Julius, his father, were
characteristic; for he reverences that famous artist with the double
love of a son and a pupil.
"Of course we did," chuckled Reynor. "Nothing missing, my boy!"
"That's funny," drawled Lorian. "Because if he didn't steal it from here
I can't imagine from where he stole it!"
"Stole what, Harry?"
"Whatever some chap broke into his studio for last night!"
"Eh!" cried the Colonel, sitting suddenly very upright. "Into your
father's studio? Burglars?"
"Suppose so," was the reply. "They took nothing that I was aware to be
in his possession, though the place was ransacked. I naturally concluded
that they had taken something that I was _unaware_ to be in his----Ah!"
Sybil Reynor entered by the door which, for the past twenty minutes,
had been the focus of Lorian's gaze. The gathering dusk precluded the
possibility of my seeing with certainty, but I think her face flushed as
her dark eyes rested upon my friend. Her beauty is not of the kind which
needs deceptive half-lights to perfect it, but there in the dimness, as
she came towards us, she looked very lovely and divinely graceful. I did
not envy Lorian his good fortune; but I suppressed a sigh when I saw how
my existence had escaped the girl's notice and how the world in her
eyes, contained only a Henry Lorian, R.I.
Her mother entered shortly afterwards and a general conversation arose,
which continued until the arrival of Ralph Edie and his sister. They
were accompanied by Felix Hulme; and their advent completed the small
party expected at Ragstaff Park.
"You late arrivals," said Lorian, "have only just time to dress, unless
you want to miss everything but the nuts!"
"Oh, Harry!" said Mrs. Reynor, "you are as bad as your father!"
"Worse," said Lorian promptly. "I am altogether more rude and have a
bigger appetite!"
With such seeming trivialities, then, opened the drama of Ragstaff, the
drama in which Fate had cast four of us for leading rôles.