The letter came by the first post and after breakfast I rang up Roy. As soon as I mentioned my name I was put through to him by his secretary. If I were writing a detective story I should immediately have suspected that my call was awaited, and Roy’s virile voice calling hullo would have confirmed my suspicion. No one could naturally be quite so cheery so early in the morning.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” I said.
“Good God, no.” His healthy laugh rippled along the wires. “I’ve been up since seven. I’ve been riding in the park. I’m just going to have breakfast. Come along and have it with me.”
“I have a great affection for you, Roy,” I answered, “but I don’t think you’re the sort of person I’d care to have breakfast with. Besides, I’ve already had mine. Look here, I’ve just had a letter from Mrs. Driffield asking me to go down and stay.”
“Yes, she told me she was going to ask you. We might go down together. She’s got quite a good grass court and she does one very well. I think you’d like it.”
“What is it that she wants me to do?”
“Ah, I think she’d like to tell you that herself.”
There was a softness in Roy’s voice such as I imagined he would use if he were telling a prospective father that his wife was about to gratify his wishes. It cut no ice with me.
“Come off it, Roy,” I said. “I’m too old a bird to be caught with chaff. Spit it out.”
There was a moment’s pause at the other end of the telephone. I felt that Roy did not like my expression.
“Are you busy this morning?” he asked suddenly. “I’d like to come and see you.”
“All right, come on. I shall be in till one.”
“I’ll be round in about an hour.”
I replaced the receiver and relit my pipe. I gave Mrs. Driffield’s letter a second glance.
I remembered vividly the luncheon to which she referred. I happened to be staying for a long weekend not far from Tercanbury with a certain Lady Hodmarsh, the clever and handsome American wife of a sporting baronet with no intelligence and charming manners. Perhaps to relieve the tedium of domestic life she was in the habit of entertaining persons connected with the arts. Her parties were mixed and gay. Members of the nobility and gentry mingled with astonishment and an uneasy awe with painters, writers, and actors. Lady Hodmarsh neither read the books nor looked at the pictures of the people to whom she offered hospitality, but she liked their company and enjoyed the feeling it gave her of being in the artistic know. When on this occasion the conversation happened to dwell for a moment on Edward Driffield, her most celebrated neighbour, and I mentioned that I had at one time known him very well she proposed that we should go over and lunch with him on Monday when a number of her guests were going back to London. I demurred, for I had not seen Driffield for five and thirty years and I could not believe that he would remember me; and if he did (though this I kept to myself) I could not believe that it would be with pleasure. But there was a young peer there, a certain Lord Scallion, with literary inclinations so violent that, instead of ruling this country as the laws of man and nature have decreed, he devoted his energy to the composition of detective novels. His curiosity to see Driffield was boundless and the moment Lady Hodmarsh made her suggestion he said it would be too divine. The star guest of the party was a big young fat duchess and it appeared that her admiration for the celebrated writer was so intense that she was prepared to cut an engagement in London and not go up till the afternoon.
“That would make four of us,” said Lady Hodmarsh. “I don’t think they could manage more than that. I’ll wire to Mrs. Driffield at once.”
I could not see myself going to see Driffield in that company and tried to throw cold water on the scheme.
“It’ll only bore him to death,” I said. “He’ll hate having a lot of strangers barging in on him like this. He’s a very old man.”
“That’s why if they want to see him they’d better see him now. He can’t last much longer. Mrs. Driffield says he likes to meet people. They never see anybody but the doctor and the parson and it’s a change for them. Mrs. Driffield said I could always bring anyone interesting. Of course she has to be very careful. He’s pestered by all sorts of people who want to see him just out of idle curiosity, and interviewers and authors who want him to read their books, and silly hysterical women. But Mrs. Driffield is wonderful. She keeps everyone away from him but those she thinks he ought to see. I mean, he’d be dead in a week if he saw everyone who wants to see him. She has to think of his strength. Naturally we’re different.”
Of course I thought I was; but as I looked at them I perceived that the duchess and
