Vansittart opened the drawing-room door, but changed his mind about going in when he saw Sefton established on the sofa, half hidden in a sea of pillows.
“I’m very late,” he said. “How do you do, Sefton?” with a curt nod. “I’m to dine in Bruton Street, mother. Good night, if I don’t see you again.”
“Pray come in, Jack. I have something very serious to tell you—or at least Mr. Sefton has. He has been waiting for you ever since five o’clock. I wanted him to tell you at once. It is too serious for delay.”
“If I hadn’t left Miss Marchant and my sister five minutes ago I should think, by your solemnity, that one of them had been killed,” exclaimed Vansittart, scornfully, crossing the room with leisurely step, and seating himself with his back to the yellow brightness of that western window. “And now, my dear mother, may I inquire the nature of the mountain which you and Mr. Sefton have conjured out of some innocent molehill? Please don’t be very slow and solemn, as I have only half an hour to dress and get to Bruton Street. Boïto’s Mephistopheles will begin at half-past eight.”
“This is no trivial matter, Jack. Perhaps when you have heard what Mr. Sefton has to tell you may hardly care about the opera—or about seeing Miss Marchant, before you have had time for serious thought.”
“There is nothing that Mr. Sefton—or the four Evangelists—could tell me that would alter my feelings about Miss Marchant by one jot or one tittle,” cried Vansittart, furiously, his angry feeling about this man leaping out of him like a sudden flame.
“Wait,” said the mother, gravely—“wait till you have heard.”
“Begin, Mr. Sefton. My mother’s preamble is eminently calculated to give importance to your communication.”
“I am hardly surprised that you should take the matter somewhat angrily, Vansittart,” said Sefton, in his smooth, persuasive voice. “I dare say I shall appear an officious beast in this business—and, had it not been for Mrs. Vansittart’s express desire, I should not be here to tell you the facts which have come to my knowledge within the last two days. I considered it my duty to tell your mother, because in our previous conversations she has been good enough to allude to old ties of friendship between your father and my father—and this made a claim upon me.”
“Proem the second,” cried Vansittart, impatiently. “When are we coming to facts?”
“The facts are so uncommonly disagreeable that I may be pardoned for approaching them diffidently. You know, I believe, that Miss Marchant has a brother—”
“Who disappeared some years ago, and about whose fate you have busied yourself,” interrupted Vansittart, with ever-growing impatience.
“All my efforts to trace Harold Marchant’s movements after his departure from Mashonaland resulted in failure, until the day before yesterday, when one of the two men whom I employed to make inquiries turned up at my house in Tite Street as suddenly as if he had dropped from the moon. This man is a courier and jack-of-all-trades, as clever and handy a dog as ever lived, a man who has travelled in all the quarters of the globe, a Venetian. When I began the search for Miss Marchant’s brother, I put the business in the first place into the hands of a highly respectable private detective; but as a second string to my bow it occurred to me to send a full statement of the circumstances, and a careful description of the missing man, to my old acquaintance, Ferrari, the courier, who travelled with my poor father on the seaboard of Italy for several months, and who helped to nurse him on his sickbed.”
Vansittart bridled his tongue, but could not keep himself from drumming with his fingers on the dainty silver table and setting all the toy harpsichords, and sofas, and birdcages, and watering-pots, and tiny tables rattling.
“I had half forgotten that I had employed this man in Harold Marchant’s business when the fellow turned up in Tite Street, irrepressibly cheerful, with the most unpleasant information.”
“What information? For God’s sake, come to the point!”
“He had traced Marchant’s career—from Mashonaland to the diamond fields, where he picked up a good bit of money; from the diamond fields to New York, from New York to Venice. For God’s sake, leave those bibelots alone,” as the silver toys leapt and rattled on the fragile table. “Do you think no one has nerves except yourself?”
“Your man traced Marchant to Venice,” said Vansittart, the restless hand suddenly motionless; “and what of him at Venice?”
“At Venice Marchant lived with a girl whom he had taken out of a factory. Pardon me, Mrs. Vansittart, for repeating these unpleasant facts—lived, gambled, drank, and enjoyed life after his own inclination, which always leaned to low company even when he was an undergraduate. From Venice he vanished suddenly, more than three years ago.”
Vansittart fancied they must needs hear that heavily beating heart of his thumping against his ribs. He fancied that, even in that dimly lighted room, they must needs see the ashen hue of his face, the beads of sweat upon his forehead. All he could do was to hold his tongue, and wait for that which was to come.
“Do you happen to remember a murder, or, I will rather say, a scuffle ending in homicide, which occurred at Venice three years ago in Carnival time—an English tourist stabbed to death by another Englishman, who got away so cleverly that he was never brought to book for what he had done? The row was about a woman, and the woman was Harold Marchant’s mistress. Marchant was jealous of the stranger’s attentions to the lady—he had lived long enough in Italy to have learnt the use of the knife—and after a
