His voice was harsh and cruel; a voice that had never been mellowed by laughter or made soft by the tendernesses of humanity.
“Good morning, Sir Gregory.”
Old Knebworth disentangled himself from his company.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“Don’t apologize,” said the other. “Only I thought you were going to shoot earlier. Brought my little girl, eh?”
“Your little girl?” Jack looked at him, frankly nonplussed. “You mean Mendoza? No, she’s not coming.”
“I don’t mean Mendoza, if that’s the dark girl. Never mind: I was only joking.”
Who the blazes was his little girl, thought Jack, who was ignorant of two unhappy experiences which an unconsidered extra girl had had on previous visits. The mystery, however, was soon cleared up, for the baronet walked slowly to where Adele Leamington was making a pretence of studying her script.
“Good morning, little lady,” he said, lifting his cap an eighth of an inch from his head.
“Good morning, Sir Gregory,” she said coldly.
“You didn’t keep your promise.” He shook his head waggishly. “Oh, woman, woman!”
“I don’t remember having made a promise,” said the girl quietly. “You asked me to come to dinner with you, and I told you that that was impossible.”
“I promised to send my car for you. Don’t say it was too far away. Never mind, never mind.” And, to Michael’s wrath, he squeezed the girl’s arm in a manner which was intended to be paternal, but which filled the girl with indignant loathing.
She wrenched her arm free, and, turning her back upon her tormentor, almost flew to Jack Knebworth with an incoherent demand for information on the reading of a line which was perfectly simple.
Old Jack was no fool. He watched the play from under his eyelids, recognizing all the symptoms.
“This is the last time we shall shoot at Griff Towers,” he told himself.
For Jack Knebworth was something of a stickler on behaviour, and had views on women which were diametrically opposite to those held by Sir Gregory Penne.
VII
The Swords and Bhag
The little party moved away, leaving Michael alone with the baronet. For a period, Gregory Penne watched the girl, his eyes glittering; then he became aware of Michael’s presence and turned a cold, insolent stare upon the other.
“What are you?” he asked, looking the detective up and down.
“I’m an extra,” said Michael.
“An extra, eh? Sort of chorus boy? Put paint and powder on your face and all that sort of thing? What a life for a man!”
“There are worse,” said Michael, holding his antagonism in check.
“Do you know that little girl—what’s her name, Leamington?” asked the baronet suddenly.
“I know her extremely well,” said Michael untruthfully.
“Oh, you do, eh?” said the master of Griff Towers with sudden amiability. “She’s a nice little thing. Quite a cut above the ordinary chorus girl. You might bring her along to dinner one night. She’d come with you, eh?”
The contortions of the puffy eyelids suggested to Michael that the man had winked. There was something about this gross figure that interested the scientist in Michael Brixan. He was elemental; an animal invested with a brain; and yet he must be something more than that if he had held a high administrative position under Government.
“Are you acting? If you’re not, you can come up and have a look at my swords,” said the man suddenly.
Michael guessed that, for a reason of his own, probably because of his claim to be Adele’s friend, the man wished to cultivate the acquaintance.
“No, I’m not acting,” replied Michael.
And no invitation could have given him greater pleasure. Did their owner realize the fact, Michael Brixan had already made up his mind not to leave Griff Towers until he had inspected that peculiar collection.
“Yes, she’s a nice little girl.”
Penne returned to the subject immediately as they paced up the slope toward the house.
“As I say, a cut above chorus girls. Young, unsophisticated, virginal! You can have your sophisticated girls: there is no mystery to ’em! They revolt me. A girl should be like a spring flower. Give me the violet and the snowdrop: you can have a bushel of cabbage roses for one petal of the shy dears of the forest.”
Michael listened with a keen sense of nausea, and yet with an unusual interest, as the man rambled on. He said things which were sickening, monstrous. There were moments when Brixan found it difficult to keep his hands off the obscene figure that paced at his side; and only by adopting toward him the attitude with which the enthusiastic naturalist employs in his dealings with snakes, was he able to get a grip of himself.
The big entrance hall into which he was ushered was paved with earthen tiles, and, looking up at the stone walls, Michael had his first glimpse of the famous swords.
There were hundreds of them—poniards, scimitars, ancient swords of Japan, basket-hilted hangers, two-handed swords that had felt the grip of long-dead Crusaders.
“What do you think of ’em, eh?” Sir Gregory Penne spoke with the pride of an enthusiastic collector. “There isn’t one of them that could be duplicated, my boy; and they’re only the rag, tag and bobtail of my collection.”
He led his visitor along a broad corridor, lighted by square windows set at intervals, and here again the walls were covered with shining weapons. Throwing open a door, Sir Gregory ushered the other into a large room which was evidently his library, though the books were few, and, so far as Michael could see at first glance, the conventional volumes that are to be found in the houses of the country gentry.
Over the mantelshelf were two great swords of a pattern which Michael did not remember having seen before.
“What do you think of those?”
Penne lifted one from the silver hook which supported it, and drew it from its scabbard.
“Don’t feel the edge unless you want to cut yourself. This would split a hair, but it would also cut you in two, and you would never know what had happened till you fell apart!”
Suddenly his manner changed, and he
