"The only thought that comforts me, dear, a little, is that, if he
should die, the living lie will die with him. He is so good, so kind,
so self-sacrificing, that I think he would be quite ready to die if he
thought his death would relieve us of the fearful tension of these last
horrible years. My dear, dear father! Ah, how stormy has his life
been! Does he know what you have just told me--I mean, that he cannot
live?"
"No," I replied.
She began to weep bitterly again, and I did my best to calm her, and
kissed her again. I told her he did not know the danger, which was the
truth. Agnew had only told him the germs would probably make him very
ill for awhile.
The house-physician at the hospital had not broken the actual truth to
him--the truth that, infected with such deadly germs he was doomed to
death. Perhaps I ought not to have told Vera the whole ghastly truth.
Yet, upon carefully considering the matter, I had decided that frankness
would be better.
"I will telephone to St. George's," I said, a little later, "and ask for
the latest news. You'd better not go to see him until the
house-physician gives you leave. He asked me to tell you that."
The reply was satisfactory. Sir Charles was not in pain, the
hall-porter said. He was slightly feverish. That was all. What grim
consolation!
Two eager days passed. Still Lady Thorold showed no sign of life. I
had telephoned to Messrs. Spink and Peters. Also I had telegraphed to
Houghton Park, as it was said Lady Thorold intended to return there.
But to no purpose. One thing that surprised me was that Whichelo had
not been to the hospital. Where was he during these days? Had he, too,
not heard of the calamity?
"You have not heard the exciting news," I said to Faulkner, when I met
him outside the Devonshire on the way to his club.
"What exciting news?" he inquired, in his cool phlegmatic way. "You get
excited so easily, Dick, if you will forgive my saying so."
He listened with interest to the news, and when I had done talking, he
said quite calmly--
"Curious to relate, I saw the Baroness, Paulton and Henderson not ten
minutes ago."
"Saw them!" I gasped. "Where?"
"In Piccadilly, not thirty yards from here. They turned up Dover
Street, and went down in the tube lift."
"Are you positive?"
"Quite. I couldn't well forget them. They were walking together,
laughing and chatting as though nothing were amiss. I admire that kind
of nerve."
Meanwhile, the newspapers were full of the remarkable discovery of the
mummified man in Sir Charles Thorold's house in Belgrave Street. The
hole cut in the ceiling gave rise to all sorts of wild surmises.
It did not, however, occur to any of the reporters that the body might
have been hidden between the ceiling and the floor.
What the newspapers worried about most was the mummy's age. Experts put
their heads together, and put on their spectacles. Some were of the
opinion that it must be centuries old. Sir Charles, the one man who
might have thrown some light upon it could not, of course, be
questioned. Only one medical expert, an old professor, differed from
his _confreres_. A wizened little man, himself not unlike a mummy, he
maintained, in the face of scientific ridicule, that the mummy found in
Belgrave Street had been dead "less than twenty years." Further, he
pronounced that the method of embalming was a process uncommon in this
country or in Egypt, but still in vogue in China and in Mexico. He
believed the body to be, he said, that of a man of middle-age, a
Spaniard, or possibly a Mexican.
The news of Sir Charles' condition was more satisfactory that evening,
inasmuch as the sister at the hospital told me, when I called, that he
was still no worse. Perhaps, after all, Dr. Agnew had been mistaken.
Oh, how I hoped he had been, for my own sake, almost as much as for my
darling's.
"I think," I said to Vera, whose spirits rose a little when she heard my
report, "that to-morrow morning I will run down to Oakham, to have
another look at Houghton."
"What on earth for?" she exclaimed, in a tone of surprise. "I intended
asking father to-day, when I saw him at the hospital, if the report that
he intended returning to Houghton were true. He seemed so hot and
restless however, that I decided not to ask him until to-morrow. I do
believe he is going to get better, don't you? But now, tell me what
good do you think you will do by going out to Houghton?"
"Good?" I answered. "I don't expect or intend to do good. No, it is
merely that something--I can't tell you what--prompts me to go again to
see the place."
"How silly!" Vera declared, as I thought rather rudely. Modern girls
are so dreadfully outspoken. I do sometimes wish we were back in the
days when a matron would raise her hands in dismay and exclaim: "Oh,
fie!" or "Oh, la!" when a young girl did aught that seemed to her
"unladylike."
Yet, in spite of Vera's remonstrance, I caught a train to Oakham early
next morning. Sir Charles had had a restless night, the hospital porter
told me on the telephone, before I started, but his condition was
surprisingly satisfactory.
Then I rang up Dr. Agnew.
"Don't you think he may, after all, recover?" I inquired eagerly.
In reply the doctor said he "only hoped and trusted that he might."
More than that, he would not tell me. I gathered, therefore, that he
still had serious fears.
I arrived at the _Stag's Head_, in Oakham, in time for lunch. Directly
after lunch I started out for Houghton in a hired car.
What a lot had happened, I reflected, as in the same car in which the
chauffeur had been shot, we purred down the main street, since I had
last set out along that road. What a number of stirring incidents had
occurred--incidents crowded into the space of a few weeks. But at last
they seemed to be coming to an end. That thought relieved me a good
deal. Ah, if only--if only Thorold would recover!
The drive to Houghton from Oakham was a pretty one, past woods and rich
grazing pastures until suddenly, turning into the great lodge-gates, we
went for nearly a quarter of a mile up the old beech avenue to where
stood the old Elizabethan house, a large, rambling pile of stone, so
full of historic associations.
On pulling up at the ancient portico, I found to my surprise, the front
door ajar. I pushed it open and entered. There was nobody in the big
stone hall--how well I remembered the last day when we had all had tea
there after hunting, and that fateful message from the butler that "Mr.
Smithson" had called to see Sir Charles. I made my way into the
drawing-rooms, then into the morning-room, and afterwards into the
dining-room. The doors were all unlocked, but the rooms were empty. It
was while making my way towards the kitchen quarters that I heard
footsteps somewhere in the house.
They were coming down the back stairs.
I waited at the foot of the stairs, just out of sight. They were firm,
heavy footfalls. A moment later, a tall man stood facing me.
It was the dark giant I had first met at dinner at the _Stag's Head_,
when we had shared a table on the night of the Hunt Ball--the man whom I
now knew to be Henry Whichelo.