A thought seemed to strike Roger as the barrister opened the door.
“I think I’ll try the Maze myself this afternoon. I feel a bit sleepy; and it’s quiet in there. I shan’t disturb you. But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll take Helen’s Bower myself. I’m used to a chair there; it suits me. You can go to Narcissus’s Pool instead. There’s nothing to pick and choose between them, since they’re both in the Maze.”
“Very good,” the barrister agreed. “It’s all the same to me, so long as no one interrupts me.”
He nodded abruptly and left the room.
When his brother had gone, Roger Shandon went over to his writing-table and busied himself with some papers. The distant piano seemed to have become more intrusive now that he was left alone. It repeated “Frühlingsrauschen” with brain-wearying persistence and a reiterated error in one particular chord. Roger frowned irritably as he busied himself with the documents before him, jotting down a note from time to time on a scribbling-block.
“Damn that young whelp! I must talk to him about this. One can’t concentrate one’s attention when half one’s mind’s wondering if he’s going to make that same slip for the hundred and first time.”
He continued his work for a few minutes, then rose and rang the bell.
“Send Mr. Stenness, if you can find him,” he ordered when the maid appeared.
In Ivor Stenness, Roger had secured an ideal private secretary. Stenness not only had the efficiency of a machine, but he possessed a full measure of qualities hardly less important. If his employer was out of sorts, even the gruffest order failed to ruffle the secretary’s temper. He was capable of taking just the right amount of responsibility in emergencies without ever going a hair’s breadth over the score. And his especial recommendation in Roger’s eyes was that he could keep his mouth shut. He never asked for explanations which might have been difficult to give; and he never betrayed the slightest surprise when, as sometimes happened, he opened threatening letters.
“If I ever have a confession of murder to put on paper,” Roger used to say, “Stenness will take it down in shorthand, type it out, and get my signature, without turning a hair. So far as he was concerned, it would be just a letter.”
Stenness’s other qualities were more in demand among the remainder of the household. He had good natural manners; and he could play games well enough to make him useful where someone was often needed to make up a golf foursome or a bridge table. A casual glance at him would have suggested that he must employ a first-class valet; for his clothes always looked new and he had the knack of carrying them well.
With all this, he was a perfectly safe person to have in a house with a young girl. He was, somehow, too inhumanly efficient to be attractive to girls younger than himself; and he showed not the slightest desire to attract. Sylvia treated him as a good friend, but she had dozens of friends whom she treated in exactly the same fashion.
“Ah, Stenness!” Roger looked up as the secretary came in. “I’ve gone over these letters and jotted down some notes. You might get them off sometime today. There’s only one of them that needs any explanation. Here it is. …”
Neville Shandon’s grim face appeared at the door for a moment. In his hand was a sheaf of papers. Seeing his brother engaged with the secretary, he nodded without saying anything and closed the door behind him.
Roger continued his explanation of the matter in hand while the secretary took a note or two. As the instructions ended, the whirr of a car leaving the front of the house attracted Roger’s attention and he crossed the room to look out of the window. Sylvia was driving, and beside her was Ernest Shandon. They glanced up as they passed under the study window, and Sylvia waved her hand. Roger watched the car swing sharply off the main avenue on its way to the East Gate, and soon it vanished behind a belt of rhododendrons.
“They might have given Neville a lift,” Roger reflected as he turned back into the room again. “They’ll be passing the Maze on the road to the East Gate.”
The sound of the piano reasserted itself in the comparative silence which followed the passing of the car. Roger made a gesture of impatience.
“I suppose that’s my nephew playing?” he demanded.
“He was shooting darts at a target in the garden, a short time ago,” Stenness explained, “but I think he came in a few minutes ago.”
“It sounds like him. Since he had that attack of sleepy sickness he always fumbles a bit on his chords—doesn’t seem able to manage his fingers perfectly. That makes this din all the harder to bear.”
Stenness refrained from any comment. Roger, after a pause, continued irritably.
“Where are the visitors, Stenness? I wish they’d attract him out of the house. Some days he’s all right and one never sees him. Other days he sits and pounds that piano till one’s head rings with it.”
“I noticed Miss Forrest and Mr. Torrance going towards the rose garden a few minutes ago.”
Stenness confined himself to answering the direct question and quietly ignored Roger’s exasperation. It was no business of his to intervene in family squabbles.
“Well, that’s all I have for you at present, Stenness. As you’re passing the door, send my nephew to me, will you? I must put a stop to this nuisance. It’s gone on quite long enough.”
The secretary made a gesture of assent, then gathered up his papers and left the room. A few seconds later, the piano-playing stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar, and Roger’s ear caught the clang of the keyboard lid being carelessly slammed. After a moment or two, his nephew entered the study.
In order to give his irritation
