Mr. Reeder put down his knife and fork.
“Dear me!” he said mildly. “Is she a lady who has seen better days?”
Margaret laughed softly.
“I should have thought she had never had such a time as she is having now,” she said. “She’s rather common and terribly illiterate. Her accounts that come up to me are fearful and wonderful things! But, seriously, I think she must have been in good circumstances. The first night I was here I went into her room to ask about an account. I did not understand—of course it was a waste of time, for books are mysteries to her—and she was sitting at a table admiring her hands.”
“Hands?” he said.
She nodded.
“They were covered with the most beautiful rings you could possibly imagine,” said Margaret, and was satisfied with the impression she made, for Mr. Reeder dropped knife and fork to his plate with a crash.
“Rings—?”
“Huge diamonds and emeralds. They took my breath away. The moment she saw me, she put her hands behind her, and the next morning she explained that they were presents given to her by a theatrical lady who had stayed here and that they had no value.”
“Props, in fact,” said Mr. Reeder.
“What is a prop?” she asked curiously, and Mr. Reeder waggled his head, and she had learnt that when he waggled his head in that fashion he was advertising his high spirits and good-humour.
After dinner he sent a waitress to find Mr. Daver, and when that gentleman arrived, Mr. Reeder had to tell him that he had a lot of work to do and request the loan of blotting pad and a special writing table for his room. Margaret wondered why he had not asked her, but she supposed that it was because he did not know that such things came into her province.
“You’re a great writer, Mr. Reeder—he-he!” Daver was convulsed at his own little joke. “So am I! I am never happy without a pen in my hand. Tell me, as a matter of interest, do you do your best work in the morning or in the evening? Personally, it is a question that I have never decided to my own satisfaction.”
“I shall now write steadily till two o’clock,” said Mr. Reeder, glancing at his watch. “That is a habit of years. From nine to two are my writing hours, after which I smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of milk—would you be good enough to see that I have a glass of milk put in my room at once?—and from two I sleep steadily till nine.”
Margaret Belman was an interested and somewhat startled audience of this personal confession. It was unusual in Mr. Reeder to speak of himself, unthinkable that he should discuss his work. In all her life she had not met an individual who was more reticent about his private affairs. Perhaps the holiday spirit was on him, she thought. He was certainly younger-looking that evening than she had ever known him.
She went out to find Mrs. Burton and convey the wishes of the guest. The woman accepted the order with a sniff.
“Milk? He looks the kind of person who drinks milk. He’s nothing to be afraid of!”
“Why should he be afraid?” asked Margaret sharply, but the reproach was lost upon Mrs. Burton.
“Nobody likes detectives nosing about a place—do they, Miss Belman? And he’s not my idea of a detective.”
“Who told you he was a detective?”
Mrs. Burton looked at her for a second from under her heavy lids, and then jerked her head in the direction of Daver’s office.
“He did,” she said. “Detectives! And me sitting here, slaving from morning till night, when I might be doing the grand in Paris or one of them places, with servants to wait on me instead of me waiting on people. It’s sickening!”
Twice since she had been at Larmes Keep, Margaret had witnessed these little outbursts of fretfulness and irritation. She had an idea that the faded woman would like some excuse to make her a confidante, but the excuse was neither found nor sought. Margaret had nothing in common with this rather dull and terribly ordinary lady, and they could find no mutual interest which would lead to the breakdown of the barriers. Mrs. Burton was a weakling; tears were never far from her eyes or voice, nor the sense of her mysterious grievances against the world far from her mind.
“They treat me like dirt,” she went on, her voice trembling with her feeble anger, “and she treats me worst of all. I asked her to come and have a cup of tea and a chat in my room the other day, and what do you think she said?”
“Whom are you talking about?” asked Margaret curiously. It did not occur to her that the “she” in question might be Olga Crewe. It would have required a very powerful effort of imagination to picture the cold and worldly Olga talking commonplaces with Mrs. Burton over a friendly cup of tea; yet it was of Olga that the woman spoke. But at the very suggestion that she was being questioned, her thin lips closed tight.
“Nobody in particular.—Milk, did you say? I’ll take it up to him myself.”
Mr. Reeder was struggling into a dressing jacket when she brought the milk to him. One of the servants had already placed pen, ink, and stationery on the table, and there were two fat manuscript books visible to any caller, and anticipating eloquently Mr. Reeder’s literary activities.
He took the tray from the woman’s hand and put it on the table.
“You have a nice house, Mrs. Burton,” he said encouragingly. “A beautiful house. Have you been here long?”
“A few years,” she answered.
She made as if to go, but lingered at the door. Mr. Reeder recognized the symptoms. Discreet she might be, a gossip she undoubtedly was, aching for human converse with any who could advance a programme of those trivialities which made up her conversational life.
“No, sir, we never get
