"I notice you have a gentleman in the parlour, there. I wonder whether
you would give me just a couple of minutes alone? I want to ask you a
question."
The landlord again glanced suspiciously at the mysterious stranger, but
seeing the earnest, determined look upon his grizzled face, rather
reluctantly consented, and conducted his customer across the low
entrance-hall to a room on the opposite side, the door of which he
closed behind them.
What transpired therein was in secret, but about five minutes later I
heard the door open again, and the stranger, with heavy tread, walk
firmly to the door.
"You won't forget the name," he called back to Warr in a strange hard
voice just before he went forth. "Richard Keene--K-e-e-n-e."
"I've promised. Trust me," was the innkeeper's response, while a moment
later the shabby stranger's form cast a long shadow across the sanded
tap-room and vanished.
"That's a queer customer?" I remarked to Warr when he returned to me,
for I had come down to pay him an account. "I don't like the look of
him somehow."
"Neither do I," the landlord answered. "At first I took him for a
burglar spying around to ascertain who was at home up at the Hall, but
I've formed a very different conclusion during the past five minutes.
He isn't a burglar, but he's somebody who evidently knows Lady Lolita."
"Knows her?" I exclaimed, surprised. "What do you mean? What did he
tell you in private?"
"Nothing. He asked me to render him a service by giving a letter in
secret to her ladyship, and as recompense gave me this." And opening
his hand, Warr showed me a sovereign. "Something fresh, this!" he
added. "A tramp who gives sovereign tips;" and he laughed very heartily
to himself.
I did not join in his laughter, for on being handed the letter I saw it
was inscribed to her ladyship and marked "Private" in a neat educated
hand, and sealed with black wax with an unfamiliar coat-of-arms bearing
a coronet and many quarterings.
"He told me also to tell her that Richard Keene has returned, and said
that she would understand. Strange, ain't it?" observed the landlord,
with a long pull at his clay.
"Very. If you wish, I'll undertake the responsibility of giving Lady
Lolita this letter and delivering the message," I said.
"No. I'll have to come up to the Hall myself," was the innkeeper's
reply. "The chap actually compelled me to take a solemn oath to deliver
it into no other hands but her own!"
"Then it must contain something of supreme importance, otherwise it
might surely have been sent by post," I remarked suspiciously.
"Yes, I feel sure it does. Did you notice how the fellow's face changed
when he saw her drive past? He went as white as a ghost. He's a
mystery--that he is."
"He is, without a doubt," I said. His announcement that Richard Keene
had returned seemed to convey some covert threat. I recollected the
tone in which he had uttered the name as he had crossed the threshold,
and it caused me to ponder deeply--very deeply.
Little, however, did I dream of the terrible significance of that name;
little did I at that moment anticipate the strange events that were to
follow--that remarkable mystery of real life which proved so
tantalising, so bewildering and so inscrutable.