“Certainly, my dear. Are you quite comfortable, Miss Lansdown?”
“Quite,” said the girl, finding it difficult not to smile as she saw Mrs. Cody flounce out with a red face and slam the door behind her.
In the hall the chauffeur was lighting a cigarette. He glanced round at the woman as she came out.
“Who’s she, aunty?” he asked.
Mrs. Cody shrugged her ample shoulders.
“She’s the girl the old man was telling you about,” she said shortly. “You ask too many questions; he’s been complainin’ about you.”
“I thought she was.” He ignored the complaint. “Not a bad-looker. I’m surprised at you leaving them two alone!”
“Never mind what you’re surprised at,” she said tartly. “Go and put that car in the garridge, and come and see me when it’s done.”
“There’s plenty of time,” answered the dutiful nephew coolly. “What’s the old man going to do?”
“How do I know?” she snapped.
But he was in no way abashed.
“Has she got the key?”
“Of course she hasn’t got the key, you fool!” she stormed. “And don’t stand there asking me silly questions. And don’t poke your nose into my business. And what do you know about keys?”
Her nephew looked at her meditatively.
“You’re a queer couple, you and him,” he said. “But it’s no business of mine. That girl’s certainly a good-looker. I’m going through to the kitchen to have some tea. The old man’s given cook and Mrs. Hartley a holiday, and the maid’s away sick. It’s rum that they should all be away together!”
He was strolling to the front door when he spoke, and now he turned back.
“Got everybody out of the house.” He frowned. “What’s the great idea, aunt?”
“Not so much ‘aunt.’ I’m ‘missus’ to you, you gaol-bird! I’ve told you about that before.” She was trembling with fury, and he knew her well enough to realize that this was not a moment to provoke her to further anger. For seven years (with a pleasant interregnum) he had preserved the polite fiction of being a pampered menial in the house of Mrs. Cody. His wages were good; he knew a little of the private affairs of the widow whom Dr. Cody had most unexpectedly married, and for the consideration he received in the shape of a good bed, an excellent allowance, plus the assistance he had in the garage, he was quite willing to be blind to many curious happenings that he had witnessed in that house.
He walked towards his aunt, his cigarette drooping from his big mouth.
“What time am I taking that girl back to town?” he asked.
“She’s staying here; you needn’t bother.”
He looked down at the floor, up at the ceiling, everywhere except at the woman, and then:
“Does she know she’s staying here?”
“Mind your own business.”
“This is my business for once,” he said obstinately. “I don’t know who she is or what she is; if there’s any monkey game going on, I’m not in it. I’ll have the car ready to take her back in an hour.”
The woman did not answer him. She walked rapidly across the hall and passed up the stairs out of sight. He waited till she had disappeared from view on the landing, and then he went out to the kitchen to his own tea and to meditate upon the strangeness of life at Weald House and the queer fate which, twelve years before, had turned his aunt from a household drudge to a lady of fortune.
It was Mrs. Cody who eventually brought in the tea, placed it on the table, and immediately retired. Sybil saw nothing strange in this, thinking that her host had something to say which he did not wish to tell her before his wife. Three times she had made an ineffectual attempt to bring the conversation round to her father and the secret which Mr. Cody had to reveal, but on each occasion he skilfully led the talk in another direction. But now, after a pretence of taking refreshment, the girl brought the matter to a head by bluntly asking what he had to tell.
“Well, young lady,” Mr. Cody coughed, “it’s a very long story, and I doubt if I can tell you everything in the time we have. Would it not be an excellent idea if I got on to the telephone to your dear mother and asked her to come down and spend an evening with us?”
The girl looked at him in astonishment.
“I’m afraid that plan would not work. Mother and I are going to a theatre tonight,” she said.
Sybil was ordinarily a very truthful person, but even very truthful people may be permitted to invent excuses for avoiding disagreeable experiences.
“May I not telephone and ask her?”
Knowing that her mother would not be back at the flat for another hour, she agreed. He went out of the room and was gone five minutes. When he returned, a broad smile suffused his face and he was rubbing his hands.
“Excellent, excellent!” he said. “Your dear mother has promised to come down this evening. I am sending the car for her. She says she can exchange the theatre tickets for another night.”
Sybil listened, petrified with amazement, and into her annoyed amusement there crept a cold thread of fear. The man was lying. The theatre engagement had been invented on the spur of the moment, and her mother was not at the flat, she well knew. Danger! As if a red light had flashed before her eyes she saw it. There was some terrible peril threatening her, and she must temporize.
“I’m so glad,” she said, with a calmness she did not feel. And then, in an easy conversational voice: “You have a very pretty house here, Mr. Cody.”
“Yes, it is a gem,” he said complacently. “Would you like to see over it? It has a remarkable history. Originally a dower house, in the gift of a relative of yours—Lord Selford. I leased it many years ago—”
“You know Mr. Havelock, don’t you?” she said in surprise.
“Hum!” He fingered his chin. “No, I
