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"Awful rot I call it, don't you? Luke is soft to worry about it."
Strangely enough, at luncheon it was Lord Radclyffe who brought up the subject matter. Edie with the tactlessness of youth had asked a point-blank question:
"Well," she said, "when is that wedding to be? and what are we bridesmaids going to wear? I warn you I won't have white – I hate a white wedding."
Then as no answer came she said impatiently:
"I wish you'd name the day, you two stupids. Awfully soft I call it hanging about like this."
Luke would have said something then, but Louisa interposed.
"It is all my fault, Edie," she said. "You know I want to take the twins out myself this season. I must give them a real good time before I marry."
"Bosh!" remarked Edith unceremoniously. "Mabel and Chris will have a far better time when you are married and can present them yourself. Tell them from me that its no fun being 'out' and the longer they put it off the better they'll enjoy themselves later on. Besides, Colonel Harris will take them about."
"Father hates sitting up late – " hazarded Louisa, somewhat lamely.
"The truth of the matter is," here broke in Lord Radclyffe dryly, "that Luke had persuaded you to put off the wedding because of this d – d impostor who seems to have set you all off by the ears."
Edie laughed and said, "Bosh!" Jim growled and murmured, "Rot!"
Luke and Louisa were silent, the while Lord Radclyffe's closely-set, dark, piercing eyes, wandered from one young face to the other. Louisa, feeling uncomfortable beneath that none too amiable scrutiny, did not know what to say, but Luke quietly remarked after awhile:
"You're right, uncle. It is my doing, but Lou agrees with me, and we are going to wait until this cloud is properly cleared up."
If any one else had spoken so clearly and decisively in direct contradiction to the old man's obvious wishes in the matter, the result would have been an outburst of ill-humour and probably a volley of invectives, not unmixed with more forcible language. But since it was Luke who had spoken – and Luke could do no wrong – Lord Radclyffe responded quite gently:
"My dear boy," he said, and it was really touching to hear the hard voice soften and linger on the endearing words, "I have told you once and for all that the story of this so-called Philip de Mountford is a fabrication from beginning to end. There is absolutely no reason for you to fret one single instant because of the lies a blackmailer chooses to trump up. As for your putting off your wedding one single hour because of this folly, why, it is positive nonsense. I should have thought you had more common-sense – and Miss Harris, too, for a matter of that."
Luke was silent for a moment or two while Edie tossed her irresponsible young head with the gesture of an absolute "I told you so." Jim muttered something behind his heavy cavalry moustache. Louisa, with head bent and fingers somewhat restless and fidgety, waited to hear what Luke would say.
"If only," he said, "you would consent, Uncle Rad to let Mr. Dobson go through this man's papers."
"What were the good of wasting Mr. Dobson's time?" retorted Lord Radclyffe with surprising good humour. "I know that the man is an impostor. I don't think it," he reiterated emphatically, "I know it."
"How?"
Before the old man had time to reply, the butler – sober, solemn Parker – came in with a card on a salver, which he presented to his master. Lord Radclyffe took up the card and grunted as he glanced at it. He always grunted when he was threatened with visitors.
"Why," he said gruffly, and he threw the card back onto the salver, "haven't you told Mr. Warren?"
"Mr. Warren," said solemn Parker, "is out, my lord."
"Then ask Mr. Dobson to call another time."
"It's not Mr. Dobson hisself, my lord. But a young gentleman from his office."
"Then tell the young gentleman from the office that I haven't time to bother about him."
"Shall I see him, sir?" asked Luke, ready to go.
"Certainly not," retorted the irascible old man. "Stay where you are. You have got Miss Harris to entertain."
"The young gentleman," resumed Parker with respectful insistence, "said he wouldn't keep your lordship five minutes. He said he'd brought some papers for your lordship's signature."
"The Tower Farm lease, Uncle Rad," remarked Luke.
"I think, Mr. Luke," assented the butler, "that the young gentleman did mention the word lease."
"Why has that confounded Warren taken himself off just when I want him?" was Lord Radclyffe's gruff comment as he rose from the table.
"Let me go, sir," insisted Luke.
"No, hang it, boy, you can't sign my name – not yet anyway. I am not yet a helpless imbecile. Show the young man into the library, Parker. I can't think why Dobson is always in such a confounded hurry about leases – sending a fool of a clerk up at most inconvenient hours."
Still muttering half audibly, he walked to the library door, which Parker held open for him, and even this he did not do without surreptitiously taking hold of Luke's hand and giving it a friendly squeeze. For a moment it seemed as if Luke would follow him, despite contrary orders. He paused, undecided, standing in the middle of the room, Louisa's kind gray eyes following his slightest movement.
Jim stolidly pulled the cigar box toward him, and Edie, with chin resting in both hands, looked sulky and generally out of sorts.
Parker – silent and correct of mien – had closed the library door behind his master, and now with noiseless tread he crossed the dining-room and opened the other door – the one that gave on the hall. Louisa instinctively turned her eyes from Luke and saw – standing in the middle of the hall – a young man in jacket suit and overcoat, who had looked up, with palpitating eagerness expressed in his face, the moment he caught sight of Parker.
It was the same man who had lifted his hat to Luke and to herself in Battersea Park this very morning. Luke saw him too and apparently also recognized him.
"That's why he bowed to us, Luke – in the park – you remember?" she said as soon as the door had once more closed on Parker and the visitor.
"Funny that you didn't know him," she continued since Luke had made no comment.
"I didn't," he remarked curtly.
"Didn't what?"
"I did not and do not know this man."
"Not Mr. Dobson's clerk?"
Luke did not answer but went out into the hall. Parker was standing beside the library door which he had just closed, having introduced the visitor into his lordship's presence.
"Parker," said Luke abruptly, "what made you tell his lordship that that young gentleman came from Mr. Dobson?"
The question had come so suddenly that Parker – pompous, dignified Parker – was thrown off his balance, and the reply which took some time in coming, sounded unconvincing.
"The young gentleman," he said slowly, "told me, Mr. Luke, that he came from Mr. Dobson."
"No, Parker," asserted Luke unhesitatingly, "he did nothing of the sort. He wanted to see his lordship and got you to help him concoct some lie whereby he could get what he wanted."
A grayish hue spread over Parker's pink and flabby countenance.
"Lord help me, Mr. Luke," he murmured tonelessly, "how did you know?"
"I didn't," replied Luke curtly. "I guessed. Now I know."
"I didn't think I was doing no harm."
"No harm by introducing into his lordship's presence strangers who might be malefactors?"
Already Luke, at Parker's first admission, had gone quickly to the library door. Here he paused, with his hand on the latch, uncertain if he should enter. The house was an old one, well-built and stout; from within came the even sound of a voice speaking quite quietly, but no isolated word could be distinguished. Parker was floundering in a quagmire of confused explanations.
"Malefactor, Mr. Luke!" he argued, "that young man was no malefactor. He spoke ever so nicely. And he had plenty of money about him. I didn't see I was doing no harm. He wanted to see his lordship and asked me to help him to it – "
"And," queried Luke impatiently, "paid you to help him, eh?"
"I thought," replied the man loftily ignoring the suggestion, "that taking in one of Mr. Dobson's cards that was lying in the tray could do no harm. I thought it couldn't do no harm. The young gentleman said his lordship would be very grateful to me when he found out what I'd done."
"And how grateful was the young gentleman to you, Parker?"
"To the tune of a five-pound note, Mr. Luke."
"Then as you have plenty of money in hand, you can pack up your things and get out of this house before I've time to tell his lordship."
"Mr. Luke – "
"Don't argue. Do as I tell you."
"I must take my notice from his lordship," said Parker, vainly trying to recover his dignity.
"Very well. You can wait until his lordship has been told."
"Mr. Luke – "
"Best not wait to see his lordship, Parker. Take my word for it."
"Very well, Mr. Luke."
There was a tone of finality in Luke's voice which apparently Parker did not dare to combat. The man looked confused and troubled. What had seemed to him merely a venial sin – the taking of a bribe for a trivial service – now suddenly assumed giant proportions – a crime almost, punished by a stern dismissal from Mr. Luke.
He went without venturing on further protest, and Luke, left standing alone in the hall, once more put his hand on the knob of the library door. This time he tried to turn it. But the door had been locked from the inside.
CHAPTER VIII
AND THUS THE SHADOW DESCENDED
From within the hum of a man's voice – speaking low and insistently – still came softly through. Luke, with the prodigality of youth, would have given ten years of his life for the gift of second-sight, to know what went on between those four walls beyond the door where he himself stood expectant, undecided, and more than vaguely anxious.
"Luke!"
It was quite natural that Louisa should stand here beside him, having come to him softly, noiselessly, like the embodiment of moral strength, and a common-sense which was almost a virtue.
"Uncle Rad," he said quietly, "has locked himself in with this man."
"Who is it, Luke?"
"The man who calls himself Philip de Mountford."
"How do you know?"
"How does one," he retorted, "know such things?"
"And Parker let him in?"
"He gave Parker a five-pound note. Parker is only a grasping fool. He concocted the story of Mr. Dobson and the lease. He is always listening at key-holes, and he knows that Mr. Dobson often sends up a clerk with papers for Uncle Rad's signature. Those things are not very difficult to manage. If one man is determined, and the other corruptible, it's done sooner or later."
"Is Lord Radclyffe safe with that man, do you think?"
"God grant it," he replied fervently.
Jim and Edie made a noisy irruption into the hall, and Luke and Louisa talked ostentatiously of indifferent things – the weather, Lent, and the newest play, until the young people had gathered up coats and hats and banged the street door to behind them, taking their breeziness, their optimism, away with them out into the spring air, and leaving the shadows of the on-coming tragedy to foregather in every angle of the luxurious house in Grosvenor Square.
And there were Luke de Mountford and Louisa Harris left standing alone in the hall; just two very ordinary, very simple-souled young people, face to face for the first time in their uneventful lives with the dark problem of a grim "might be." A locked door between them and the decisions of Fate; a world of possibilities in the silence which now reigned beyond that closed door.
They were – remember – wholly unprepared for it, untrained for any such eventuality. Well-bred and well-brought up, yet were they totally uneducated in the great lessons of life. It was as if a man absolutely untutored in science were suddenly to be confronted with a mathematical problem, the solution or non-solution of which would mean life or death to him. The problem lay in the silence beyond the locked door – silence broken now and again by the persistently gentle hum of the man's voice – the stranger's – but never by a word from Lord Radclyffe.
"Uncle Rad," said Luke at last in deep puzzlement, "has never raised his voice once. I thought that there would be a row – that he would turn the man out of the house. Dear old chap! he hasn't much patience as a rule."
"What shall we do, Luke?" she asked.
"How do you mean?"
"You can't go on standing like that in the hall as if you were eavesdropping. The servants will be coming through presently."
"You are right, Lou," he said, "as usual. I'll go into the dining-room. I could hear there if anything suspicious was happening in the library."
"You are not afraid, Luke?"
"For Uncle Rad, you mean?"
"Of course."
"I hardly know whether I am or not. No," he added decisively after a moment's hesitation, "I am not afraid of violence – the fellow whom we saw in the park did not look that sort."
He led Louisa back into the dining-room, where a couple of footmen were clearing away the luncheon things. The melancholy Parker placed cigar box and matches on a side table and then retired – silent and with a wealth of reproach expressed in his round, beady eyes.
Soon Luke and Louisa were alone. He smoked and she sat in a deep arm-chair close to him saying nothing, for both knew what went on in the other's mind.
Close on an hour went by and then the tinkle of a distant bell broke the silence. Voices were heard somewhat louder of tone in the library, and Lord Radclyffe's sounded quite distinct and firm.
"I'll see you again to-morrow," he said, "at Mr. – Tell me the name and address again, please."
The door leading from library to hall was opened. A footman helped the stranger on with coat and hat. Then the street door banged to again, and once more the house lapsed into silence and gloom.
