He had his own remedies for this mischance. Sheep were of no use to him. He had counted most of the sheep upon the South Downs upon an unhappy night, but having missed one he had been forced to go back and count them all over again; and his annoyance at his carelessness had kept him awake till morning. His better plan was to throw open his curtains and raise his blinds, and the inrush of fresh air through the open windows as a rule quickly sent him off. He tried this cure now.
First of all he turned on his bedside lamp and looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before two o’clock in the morning. Then he rose from his bed and freed the side window from all its coverings. He noticed that a light was still burning even at that late hour in the chalet beyond the avenue, but it was now upon the first floor and not in the office.
“Mr. Webster has finished his work and is now going to bed,” he reflected with a warm approval of the young man’s industry.
The next moment assured him that his judgment was correct. For whilst he looked, the light flickered and went out. Mr. Ricardo wished the manager a deeper repose than he was enjoying himself, and passed on to his front window.
He threw the curtains wide open with a rattle of rings, and wound the blind up upon its roller. The country was spread wide in front of him upon this side, and the air fresher. The moon had set, leaving the night dark and clear and the sky gemmed with stars. But it was not the coolness of the air nor the blaze above his head which kept Mr. Ricardo standing in so fixed an attitude. When he had taken his last look from this window before getting into bed more than three hours ago, not one light had been burning in the white house upon the hill. Now the long range of windows was ablaze from end to end, shining clear in little oblongs of light where the front of the house was in full view, and throwing the trees into relief at the two ends. The building was illuminated like a palace.
“Now what is the meaning of that?” Mr. Ricardo was asking himself. “Who in a country district would start the evening at so late an hour? It is very, very odd.”
No answer being forthcoming, and his feet growing cold upon the polished boards of the floor, he retired to his bed and turned out his lamp. But his curiosity was thoroughly roused. From his position upon his pillows, he could see that golden blur upon the darkness. He could not but see it. He could not but think of it.
“This will never do,” he said to himself. “I must try recipe number two.”
Recipe number two was a book. But it must be read for itself, not as the gateway of dreams. If you put the thought of sleep altogether out of your mind and settled down to your volume, presto! the trick was done. You are aware suddenly of broad daylight, a cup of tea by your bedside and a lamp extravagantly burning. Mr. Ricardo’s trouble was that he hadn’t a book in his room. Very well then, he must go to the library and take one. So on went his light again. He got out of bed and into his pumps, draped his form in a Japanese dressing-gown of flowered silk, and with a box of matches in his hand stole off along the corridors. He knew their geography by now, and one march took him to the dining-room door. The French windows of the three rooms en suite were undraped. He passed therefore through that room and the salon and into the library without having to strike a second match. He remembered that there was a light-switch in the library close to the long window and just within the door. He was feeling for it when something dark on the terrace outside flicked past the panes and vanished. Mr. Ricardo was so startled that he dropped his box of matches on the floor. He stood in the dark, with his heart pounding noisily in his breast, not daring to move. And in the silence, even above the clamour of his heart, he heard a key grate in the lock.
The truth must be told. Mr. Ricardo’s immediate impulse was precipitately to retire. But with an effort he rejected it as unworthy. The thought of the long corridor, too, through which he must return daunted him. He stood his ground, and in a little while the fluttering of panic subsided. He was his own man again; and being so he could not leave things as they were, select a book and go quietly back to his bed. For the prospect of an adventure never failed to thrill him.
He opened the long window very cautiously and stepped out on to the pavement of the terrace. Far away a star beam trembled on the water of the Gironde. Close to him upon his left the projecting round of the turret loomed largely, and from the front of it some rays of light streamed out. Mr. Ricardo moved cautiously forward from the angle made by the turret and the house wall; the light slipped out at the edges of a curtain drawn across a long window in the front of the turret. Someone was awake in the room behind the window. Someone had slid with the swiftness of a snake into that room and turned a key. Mr. Ricardo was in doubt what to do. He had heard of strange doings in country houses, even in
