"Indeed." I swung round on him hastily. "By-the-by, what is your mistress's name?"

He drew back a pace and eyed me with some embarra.s.sment. "You'll excuse me, sir, but that ain't quite a fair question as between you and me."

"No? I should have thought it innocent enough."

"Of course, it's a hopen secret, and you're only askin' it to try me.

But so long as the mistress fancies a hincog--"

"Lead on," said I. "You are an exemplary young man, and I, too, am playing the game to the best of my lights."

"Yes, sir." He led me up to a room prepared for me--with candles lit, hot water ready, and bed neatly turned down. On the bed lay the full costume of a Punchinello: striped stockings, breeches with rosettes, tinselled coat with protuberant stomach and hump, c.o.c.ked hat, and all proper accessories--even to a false nose.

"Am I expected to get into these things?" I asked.

"If I can be of any a.s.sistance, sir--"

"Thank you: no." I handed him the key of my bag, flung off coat and waistcoat, and sat down to unlace my boots. "Your mistress is in the drawing-room, I suppose, with her guests?"

"She is, sir."

"And Mr. Herbert?"

"Mr. 'Erbert was to have been 'ome by ten-thirty. He is--as you know, sir--a little irregilar. But youth,"--William arranged my brushes carefully--"youth must 'ave its fling. Oh, he's a caution!" A chuckle escaped him; he checked it and was instantly demure. Almost, indeed, he eyed me with a look of rebuke. "Anything more, sir?"

"Nothing more, thank you."

He withdrew. I thrust my feet into the dressing slippers he had set out for me, and, dropping into an armchair, began to take stock of the situation. "The one thing certain," I told myself, "is that Trewlove in my absence has let my house. Therefore Trewlove is certainly an impudent scoundrel, and any grand jury would bring in a true bill against him for a swindler. My tenants are a lady whose servants may not reveal her name, and a young man--her husband perhaps--described as 'a little irregilar.'

They are giving a large fancy-dress ball below--which seems to prove that, at any rate, they don't fear publicity. And, further, although entire strangers to me, they are expecting my arrival and have prepared a room. Now, why?"

Here lay the real puzzle, and for some minutes I could make nothing of it.

Then I remembered my telegram. According to William it had been referred back to the post office. But William on his own admission had but retailed pantry gossip caught up from Mr. Horrex (presumably the butler).

Had the telegram been sent back _unopened?_ William's statement left this in doubt. Now supposing these people to be in league with Trewlove, they might have opened the telegram, and, finding to their consternation that I was already on the road and an exposure inevitable, have ordered my room to be prepared, trusting to throw themselves on my forgiveness, while Trewlove lay a-hiding or fled from vengeance across the high seas.

Here was a possible explanation; but I will admit that it seemed, on second thoughts, an unlikely one. An irate landlord, returning unexpectedly and finding his house in possession of unauthorised tenants--catching them, moreover, in the act of turning it upside-down with a fancy-dress ball--would naturally begin to be nasty on the doorstep. The idea of placating him by a bedroom near the roof and the costume of a Punchinello was too bold altogether, and relied too much on his unproved fund of goodnature. Moreover, Mr. Herbert (whoever he might be) would not have treated the situation so cavalierly. At the least (and however 'irregilar'), Mr. Herbert would have been waiting to deprecate vengeance. A wild suspicion occurred to me that 'Mr. Herbert' might be another name for Trewlove, and that Trewlove under that name was gaining a short start from justice. But no: William had alluded to Mr. Herbert as to a youth sowing his wild oats. Impossible to contemplate Trewlove under this guise! Where then did Trewlove come in? Was he, perchance, 'Mr. Horrex,' the butler?

I gave it up and began thoughtfully, and not without difficulty, to case myself in the disguise of Punchinello. I resolved to see this thing through. The costume had evidently not been made to my measure, and in the process of induing it I paused once or twice to speculate on the eccentricities of the figure to which it had been shaped or the abstract anatomical knowledge of the tailor who had shaped it. I declare that the hump seemed the one normal thing about it. But by this time my detective-hunger--not to call it a thirst for vengeance--was a.s.serting itself above petty vanity. I squeezed myself into the costume; and then, clapping on the false nose, stood arrayed--as queer a figure, surely, as ever was a.s.sumed by retributive Justice.

So, with a heart hardened by indignation and prepared for the severest measures, I descended to the drawing-room landing. Two doors opened upon it--that of the drawing-room itself, which faced over a terrace roofing the kitchens and across it to a garden in the rear of the house, and that of a room overlooking the street and scarcely less s.p.a.cious. This had been the deceased General's bedroom, and in indolence rather than impiety I had left it unused with all its hideous furniture--including the camp-bed which his martial habits affected. And this was the apartment I entered, curious to learn how it had been converted into a reception-room for the throng which now filled it.

I recognised only the wall-paper. The furniture had been removed, the carpet taken up, the boards waxed to a high degree of slipperiness; and across the far end stretched a buffet-table presided over by a venerable person in black, with white hair, a high clear complexion, and a deportment which hit a nice mean between the military and the episcopal.

I had scarcely time to tell myself that this must be Mr. Horrex, before he looked up and caught sight of me. His features underwent a sudden and astonishing change; and almost dropping a bottle of champagne in his flurry, he came swiftly round the end of the buffet towards me.

I knew not how to interpret his expression: surprise was in it, and eagerness, and suppressed agitation, and an appeal for secrecy, and at the same time (if I mistook not) a deep relief.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he began, in a sort of confidential whisper, very quick and low, "but I was not aware you had arrived."

I gazed at him with stern inquiry.

"You are Mr. Richardson, are you not?" he asked. There could be no doubt of his agitation.

"I am; and I have been in this, my house, for some three-quarters of an hour."

"They never told me," he groaned. "And I left particular instructions --But perhaps you have already seen the mistress?"

"I have not. May I ask you to take me to her--since I have not the pleasure of her acquaintance?"

"Cert'nly, sir. Oh, at once! She is in the drawing-room putting the best face on it. Twice she has sent in to know if you have arrived, and I sent word, 'No, not yet,' though it cut me to the 'eart."

"She is anxious to see me?"

"Desprit, sir."

"She thinks to avoid exposure, then?" said I darkly, keeping a set face.

"She 'opes, sir: she devoutly 'opes." He groaned and led the way.

"It may, after all, be a lesson to Mr. 'Erbert," he muttered as we reached the landing.

"I fancy it's going to be a lesson to several of you."

"The things we've 'ad to keep dark, sir--the goings-on!"

"I can well believe it."

"I was in some doubts about you, sir--begging your pardon: but in spite of the dress, sir--which gives a larky appearance, if I may say it--and doubtless is so meant--you rea.s.sure me, sir: you do indeed. I feel the worst is over. We can put ourselves in your 'ands."

"You have certainly done that," said I. "As for the worst being over--"

We were within the drawing-room by this time, and he plucked me by the sleeve in his excitement, yet deferentially. "Yonder is the mistress, sir--in the yellow h'Empire satin--talking with the gentleman in sky-blue rationals. Ah, she sees you!"

She did. And I read at once in her beautiful eyes that while talking with her partner she had been watching the door for me. She came towards me with an eager catch of the breath--one so very like a cry of relief that in the act of holding out her hand she had to turn to the nearest guests and explain.

"It's Mr. Richardson--'George Anthony,' you know--who wrote _Larks in Aspic!_ I had set my heart on his coming, and had almost given him up.

Why are you so cruelly late?" she demanded, turning her eyes on mine.

Her hand was still held out to me. I had meant to hold myself up stiffly and decline it; but somehow I could not. She was a woman, after all, and her look told me--and me only--that she was in trouble. Also I knew her by face and by report. I had seen her acting in more than one exceedingly stupid musical comedy, and wondered why 'Clara Joy' condescended to waste herself upon such inanities. I recalled certain notes in her voice, certain moments when, in the midst of the service of folly, she had seemed to isolate herself and stand watching, aloof from the audience and her fellow-actors, almost pathetically alone. Report said, too, that she was good, and that she had domestic troubles, though it had not reached me what these troubles were. Certainly she appeared altogether too good for these third-rate guests--for third-rate they were to the most casual eye.

And the trouble, which signalled to me now in her look, clearly and to my astonishment included no remorse for having walked into a stranger's house and turned it up-side down without so much as a by-your-leave.

She claimed my goodwill confidently, without any appeal to be forgiven.

I held my feelings under rein and took her hand.

As I released it she motioned me to give her my arm. "I must find you supper at once," she said quietly, in a tone that warned me not to decline. "Not--not in there; we will try the library downstairs."

Down to the library I led her accordingly, and somehow was aware--by that supernumerary sense which works at times in the back of a man's head--of Horrex discreetly following us. At the library-door she turned to him.

"When I ring," she said. He bowed and withdrew.

The room was empty and dark. She switched on the electric light and nodded to me to close the door.

"Take that off, please," she commanded.