attracted by the presence in the room of another person, who must have joined the group while he was upstairs searching for the seal. The newcomer was a man of about Mr. Lavington’s age and figure, who stood just behind his chair, and who, at the moment when Faxon first saw him, was gazing at young Rainer with an equal intensity of attention. The likeness between the two men—perhaps increased by the fact that the hooded lamps on the table left the figure behind the chair in shadow—struck Faxon the more because of the contrast in their expression. John Lavington, during his nephew’s clumsy attempt to drop the wax and apply the seal, continued to fasten on him a look of half-amused affection; while the man behind the chair, so oddly reduplicating the lines of his features and figure, turned on the boy a face of pale hostility.
The impression was so startling that Faxon forgot what was going on about him. He was just dimly aware of young Reiner’s exclaiming; “Your turn, Mr. Grisben!” of Mr. Grisben’s protesting: “No—no; Mr. Faxon first,” and of the pen’s being thereupon transferred to his own hand. He received it with a deadly sense of being unable to move, or even to understand what was expected of him, till he became conscious of Mr. Grisben’s paternally pointing out the precise spot on which he was to leave his autograph. The effort to fix his attention and steady his hand prolonged the process of signing, and when he stood up—a strange weight of fatigue on all his limbs—the figure behind Mr. Lavington’s chair was gone.
Faxon felt an immediate sense of relief. It was puzzling that the man’s exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr. Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any rate he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted. Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch inscribing his name at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington—his eyes no longer on his nephew—examining a strange white-winged orchid in the vase at his elbow. Every thing suddenly seemed to have grown natural and simple again, and Faxon found himself responding with a smile to the affable gesture with which his host declared: “And now, Mr. Faxon, we’ll dine.”
III
“I wonder how I blundered into the wrong room just now; I thought you told me to take the second door to the left,” Faxon said to Frank Rainer as they followed the older men down the gallery.
“So I did; but I probably forgot to tell you which staircase to take. Coming from your bedroom, I ought to have said the fourth door to the right. It’s a puzzling house, because my uncle keeps adding to it from year to year. He built this room last summer for his modern pictures.”
Young Rainer, pausing to open another door, touched an electric button which sent a circle of light about the walls of a long room hung with canvases of the French impressionist school.
Faxon advanced, attracted by a shimmering Monet, but Rainer laid a hand on his arm.
“He bought that last week. But come along—I’ll show you all this after dinner. Or
“Does he really love things?”
Rainer stared, clearly perplexed at the question. “Rather! Flowers and pictures especially! Haven’t you noticed the flowers? I suppose you think his manner’s cold; it seems so at first; but he’s really awfully keen about things.”
Faxon looked quickly at the speaker. “Has your uncle a brother?”
“Brother? No—never had. He and my mother were the only ones.”
“Or any relation who—who looks like him? Who might be mistaken for him?”
“Not that I ever heard of. Does he remind you of some one?”
“Yes.”
“That’s queer. We’ll ask him if he’s got a double. Come on!”
But another picture had arrested Faxon, and some minutes elapsed before he and his young host reached the diningroom. It was a large room, with the same conventionally handsome furniture and delicately grouped flowers; and Faxon’s first glance showed him that only three men were seated about the dining-table. The man who had stood behind Mr. Lavington’s chair was not present, and no seat awaited him.
When the young men entered, Mr. Grisben was speaking, and his host, who faced the door, sat looking down at his untouched soup-plate and turning the spoon about in his small dry hand.
“It’s pretty late to call them rumours—they were devilish close to facts when we left town this morning,” Mr. Grisben was saying, with an unexpected incisiveness of tone.
Mr. Lavington laid down his spoon and smiled interrogatively. “Oh, facts—what
“You haven’t heard anything from town?” Mr. Grisben persisted.
“Not a syllable. So you see…. Balch, a little more of that
The dinner progressed through a series of complicated courses, ceremoniously dispensed by a prelatical butler attended by three tall footmen, and it was evident that Mr. Lavington took a certain satisfaction in the pageant. That, Faxon reflected, was probably the joint in his armour—that and the flowers. He had changed the subject—not abruptly but firmly—when the young men entered, but Faxon perceived that it still possessed the thoughts of the two elderly visitors, and Mr. Balch presently observed, in a voice that seemed to come from the last survivor down a mine-shaft: “If it
Mr. Lavington looked bored but polite. “Wall Street can stand crashes better than it could then. It’s got a robuster constitution.”
“Yes; but—”
“Speaking of constitutions,” Mr. Grisben intervened: “Frank, are you taking care of yourself?”
A flush rose to young Rainer’s cheeks.
“Why, of course! Isn’t that what I’m here for?”
“You’re here about three days in the month, aren’t you? And the rest of the time it’s crowded restaurants and hot ballrooms in town. I thought you were to be shipped off to New Mexico?”
