Roger Shandon’s face reflected the grimness of his brother’s smile.
“I quite understand what you feel about it. In fact, I’m in much the same boat myself. That’s what turned my mind to the possibility in your case.”
The barrister glanced at him keenly.
“Some more of your disreputable past cropping up, eh? I don’t care much for some of your old acquaintances. Who’s this fresh one?”
Roger grinned shamelessly. His brother knew something of the way in which he had made his money; for at times it had been useful to Roger to take legal advice without bringing an outsider into problems which came too near the edge of the law.
“It’s another gentleman with a grievance—from Cape Town this time,” he explained. “He says he acted as my agent in some I.D.B. business when I was out there. He says that I got the profit out of it and that the profit was big enough to split comfortably into two. According to him, I gave him away to the authorities later on; and he spent a period of retirement, on the Breakwater or some such health resort. The cure took some years in the sanatorium; and he hated the treatment. Too much open-air exercise with plain food; and too many uniforms about for his taste. That part’s true enough—he’s just out of gaol. As to the rest, he needn’t expect me to corroborate it on oath.”
“Blackmail, I suppose?” asked the barrister, perfunctorily. “I’ll have a talk with him, if you like. Perhaps my persuasive style”—the harsh lines about his mouth deepened—“would help to convert him to honesty. It’ll be no trouble.”
Roger nodded his thanks.
“I’ll turn you on if necessary; but it’s hardly likely. He seems to me a vapouring sort of beast. ‘Your money or your life’ style of thing, you know. When I naturally refused point-blank to pay him a stiver, he frothed over at once with threats to do me in. ‘Tim Costock, the Red-handed Avenger’—and all that sort of thing. I left him frothing. He didn’t seem to me the sort of type that would do more than froth—and he can prove nothing.”
“I don’t suppose he can.” Neville agreed, knowing from past experience that his brother left very little behind him for enemies to pick up. “Well, I want to run over my notes for the Hackleton case this afternoon. Where can I find a place where I’ll be free from interruption? With these youngsters in the house, one can never be sure of having a room to oneself for half an hour at a time; and even if one retires to one’s bedroom, somebody’s sure to start a duel with the piano. I thought piano-playing had gone out of fashion; but I’ve heard it every day since I came here.”
“That’s Arthur,” Roger Shandon interjected, irritably. “No one else touches the damned thing.”
Ernest had apparently been cogitating deeply. He now turned a dull eye on his elder brother.
“Try the Maze,” he advised.
“What do you mean by that?” demanded Neville. “Try the Maze? It sounds like an advertisement for tea or one of these riddles, like: ‘Why is a hen?’ ”
Ernest elaborated his suggestion.
“I mean the Maze,” he explained laboriously. “The thing like the one at Hampton Court, down by the river, close to the boathouse. None of the visitors is likely to find a way to either of the centres; and none of us is likely to disturb you. We don’t usually go there; at least, I don’t myself.”
Neville’s face had shown enlightenment at the first sentence.
“Oh, our Maze, you mean? We were talking about the piano when you burst in, Ernest, and I didn’t quite take the connection. That’s not a bad notion. As you say, nobody’s likely to bother me if I plant myself in either of the centres. Besides, I want all the fresh air I can get just now; it’ll be better out there than anywhere inside the house. Right. I’ll go to Helen’s Bower.”
He moved towards the door as he spoke; but before he reached it a piano sounded not far off, and the opening bars of Sinding’s “Frühlingsrauschen” came to their ears. Neville turned back with his hand on the door-handle.
“By the way, Roger, what about that young nephew of ours? He seems all right—a bit moody, perhaps, but nothing out of the common. What does the doctor say?”
Roger’s face clouded.
“Arthur? He’s a young pest. About thrice a week he takes a fancy to the piano, and then he spends the whole day playing one piece over and over again, like an automatic machine—except for the mistakes. Damnable. You don’t know how I hate the sound of the ‘Spring Song’ and ‘Frühlingsrauschen.’ You must have heard him at it this morning; and now he’s starting all over again.”
The barrister nodded.
“Yes, but what about his general tone?” he asked. “Has he got over the encephalitis completely? Did the Harley Street man find anything permanently wrong?”
Roger’s face betrayed little satisfaction.
“Oh, the specialist looked devilish wise the last time he examined him; but that was about all it amounted to. It seems they know next to nothing about sleepy sickness. I understood him to say that the brain cells are all churned up with the inflammation; and the result may be anything you please. Of course Arthur was lucky to get off with no physical damage—his eyesight and hearing and all that are quite all right. But it seems one can never tell what changes may have taken place in the brain structure—things that don’t normally show at all. He may be all right, for all
