In a way, their meeting the next morning was fortuitous enough, yet it
had also its significance for both of them. Geraldine’s greeting was
almost studiously formal.
“You are not going to scold me for my memory, are you?” Captain Granet
asked, looking down at her with a faintly humorous uplifting of the
eyebrows. “I must have exercise, you know.”
“I don’t even remember telling you that I came into the Park in the
mornings,” Geraldine replied.
“You didn’t--that is to say you didn’t mention the Park particularly,”
he admitted. “You told me you always took these five dogs out for a walk
directly after breakfast, and for the rest I used my intelligence.”
“I might have gone into Regent’s Park or St. James’ Park,” she reminded
him.
“In which case,” he observed, “I should have walked up and down until I
had had enough of it, and then gone away in a bad temper.”
“Don’t be foolish,” she laughed. “I decline absolutely to believe that
you had a single thought of me when you turned in here. Do you mind if I
say that I prefer not to believe it?”
He accepted the reproof gracefully.
“Well, since we do happen to have met,” he suggested, “might I walk with
you a little way? You see,” he went on, “it’s rather dull hobbling along
here all alone.”
“Of course you may, if you like,” she assented, glancing sympathetically
at his stick. “How is your leg getting on?”
“It’s better--getting on finely. So far as my leg is concerned, I
believe I shall be fit to go out again within ten days. It’s my arm that
bothers me a little. One of the nerves, the doctor said, must be wrong.
I can only just lift it. You’ve no idea,” he went on, “how a game leg
and a trussed-up arm interfere with the little round of one’s
daily life. I can’t ride, can’t play golf or billiards, and for an
unintelligent chap like me,” he wound up with a sigh, “there aren’t a
great many other ways of passing the time.”
“Why do you call yourself unintelligent?” she protested. “You couldn’t
have got through your soldiering so well if you had been.”
“Oh! I know all the soldier stuff,” he admitted, “know my job, that is
to say, all right, and of course I am moderately good at languages, but
that finishes me. I haven’t any brains like your friend Thomson, for
instance.”
“Major Thomson is very clever, I believe,” she said a little coldly.
“And a little censorious, I am afraid,” Granet added with a slight
grimace. “I suppose he thinks I am a garrulous sort of ass but I really
can’t see why he needed to go for your brother last night just because
he was gratifying a very reasonable curiosity on my part. It isn’t
as though I wasn’t in the Service. The Army and the Navy are the same
thing, any way, and we are always glad to give a Navy man a hint as to
how we are getting on.”
“I really couldn’t quite understand Major Thomson myself,” she agreed.
“May I ask--do you mind?” he began,--“have you been engaged to him
long?”
She looked away for a moment. Her tone, when she replied, was meant to
convey some slight annoyance at the question.
“About three months.”
Captain Granet kicked a pebble away from the path in front of him with
his sound foot.
“I should think he must be a very good surgeon,” he remarked in a
measured tone. “Looks as though he had lots of nerve, and that sort of
thing. To tell you the truth, though, he rather frightens me. I don’t
think that he has much sympathy with my type.”
She became a little more indulgent and smiled faintly as she looked at
him.
“I wonder what your type is?” she asked reflectively.
“Fairly obvious, I am afraid,” he confessed, with a sigh. “I love my
soldiering, of course, and I am ashamed to think how keen I have been
on games, and should be still if I had the chance. Outside that I don’t
read much, I am not musical, and I am very much predisposed to let
the future look after itself. There are thousands just like me,” he
continued thoughtfully. “We don’t do any particular harm in the world
but I don’t suppose we do much good.”
“Don’t be silly,” she protested. “For one thing, it is splendid to be a
capable soldier. You are just what the country wants to-day. But apart
from that I am quite sure that you have brains.”
“Have I?” he murmured. “Perhaps it’s the incentive I lack.”
They were silent for a few moments. Then they began to talk more
lightly. They discussed dogs and horses, their mutual friends, and their
engagements for the next few days. They did not once refer to Thomson.
Presently Geraldine paused to speak to some friends. Granet leaned upon
his stick in the background and watched her. She was wearing a plain
tailor made suit and a becoming little hat, from underneath which little
wisps of golden hair had somehow detached themselves in a fascinating
disorder. There was a delicate pink colour in her cheeks, the movements
and lines of her body were all splendidly free and graceful. As she
talked to her friends her eyes for the moment seemed to have lost their
seriousness. Her youth had reasserted itself--her youth and splendid
physical health. He watched her eagerly, and some shadow seemed to pass
from his own face--the shadow of his suffering or his pain. He, too,
seemed to grow younger. The simplest and yet the most wonderful joy in
life was thrilling him. At last she bade farewell to her friends and
came smiling towards him.
“I am so sorry to have kept you all this time!” she exclaimed. “Lady
Anne has just told me the time and I am horrified. I meant to walk
here for an hour and we have been here for two. Stop that taxi for me,
please. I cannot spare the time even to walk home.”
He handed her into the cab and whistled for the dogs, who all scrambled
in after her.
“Thanks to much for looking after a helpless cripple,” he said
pleasantly, as they shook hands. “You mustn’t grudge the time. Doing
your duty to the country, you know.”
He tactfully avoided any mention of a future meeting and was rewarded
with a little wave of her hand from the window of the cab. He himself
left the Park at the same time, strolled along Piccadilly as far as
Sackville Street and let himself into his rooms. His servant came
forward to meet him from the inner room, and took his cap and stick.
“Any telephone messages, Jarvis?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Granet moved towards the easy-chair. On the way he stopped. The door of
one of the cupboards in the sideboard was half open. He frowned.
“Haven’t I told you, Jarvis, that I wish those cupboards kept locked?”
he asked a little curtly.
The man was staring towards the sideboard in some surprise.
“I am very sorry, sir,” he said. “I certainly believed that I locked it
last night.”
Granet opened it wide and looked inside. His first glance was careless
enough, then his expression changed. He stared incredulously at the
small array of bottles and turned swiftly around.
“Have you moved anything from here?”
“Certainly not, sir,” was the prompt reply.
Granet closed the cupboard slowly. Then he walked to the window for a
moment, his hands behind his back.
“Any one been here this morning at all, Jarvis?” he inquired.
“A man for the laundry, sir, and a person to test the electric light.”
“Left alone in the room at all?”
“The electric light man was here for a few minutes, sir.”
The master and servant exchanged quick glances. The latter was looking
pale and nervous.
“Is anything missing, sir?” he asked.
“Yes!” Granet replied. “Did you notice the gentleman who called last
evening--Surgeon-Major Thomson?”
“Yes, sir!”
“You haven’t seen him since? He hasn’t been here?”
“No, sir!”
Granet stood, for a moment, thinking. The servant remained motionless.
The silence in the room was ominous; so, also, was the strange look of
disquietude in the two men’s faces.
“Jarvis,” his master said at last, “remember this. I am not finding
fault. I know you are always careful. But from tonight be more vigilant
than ever. There is a new hand in the game. He may not suspect us yet
but he will. You understand, Jarvis?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
The man withdrew noiselessly. Once more Granet walked to the window.
He looked down for a few minutes at the passers-by but he saw nothing.
Grave thoughts were gathering together in his mind. He was travelling
along the road of horrors and at the further end of it a man stood
waiting. He saw himself draw nearer and nearer to the meeting his name
almost frame itself upon his lips, the name of the man whom he had grown
to hate.