The prospect did not seem to fill him with any great enthusiasm and once again Campion’s curiosity was piqued. Young Mr. Groome was certainly not in seasonable mood.
In the ordinary way Campion would have dismissed the matter from his mind, but there was something about the youngster which attracted him. something indefinable and of a despairing quality, and moreover, there had been that curious intercepted glance in the train.
They talked in a desultory fashion throughout the uncomfortable journey. Campion learned that young Groome was in his father’s firm of solicitors, that he was engaged to be married to the girl with the brandy-ball eyes, who was a Miss Patricia Bullard of an old north country family, and that he thought Christmas was a waste of time.
“I hate it.” he said with a sudden passionate intensity which startled even his mild inquisitor. “All this sentimental good-will-to-all-men business is false and sickening. There’s no such thing as good will. The world’s rotten.”
He blushed as soon as he had spoken and turned away.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, “but all this bogus Dickensian stuff makes me writhe.”
Campion made no direct comment. Instead he asked with affable inconsequence, “Was that young Victor Preen I saw in the other car?”
Peter Groome turned his head and regarded him with the steady stare of the willfully obtuse.
“I was introduced to someone with a name like that, I think, ‘ he said carefully. “He was a little baldish man, wasn’t he?”
“No, that’s Sir George.” The secretary leaned over the luggage to give the information. “Preen is the tall young man, rather handsome, with the very curling hair. He’s
“Obscenely so,” said Mr. Peter Groome abruptly, and returned to his despairing contemplation of the landscape.
Underhill was
The great Jacobean house was festooned with holly. An eighteen-foot tree stood in the great hall. Yule logs blazed on iron dogs in the wide hearths and already the atmosphere was thick with that curious Christmas smell which is part cigar smoke and part roasting food.
Sir Philip Cookham stood receiving his guests with pathetic bewilderment. Every now and again his features broke into a smile of genuine welcome as he saw a face he knew. He was a distinguished-looking old man with a fine head and eyes permanently worried by his country’s troubles.
“My dear boy, delighted to see you. Delighted,” he said, grasping Campion’s hand. “I’m afraid you’ve been put over in the Dower House. Did Florence tell you? She said you wouldn’t mind, but I insisted that Feering went over there with you and also young Peter.” He sighed and brushed away the visitor’s hasty reassurances. “I don’t know why the dear girl never feels she has a party unless the house is so overcrowded that our best friends have to sleep in the annex,” he said sadly.
The “dear girl,” looking not more than fifty-five of her sixty years, was clinging to the arm of the lady novelist at that particular moment and the two women were emitting mirthless parrot cries at each other. Cookham smiled.
“She’s happy, you know,” he said indulgently. “She enjoys this sort of thing. Unfortunately I have a certain amount of urgent work to do this weekend, but we’ll get in a chat, Campion, some time over the holiday. I want to hear your news. You’re a lucky fellow. You can tell your adventures.”
The lean man grimaced. “More secret sessions, sir?” he inquired.
The cabinet minister threw up his hands in a comic but expressive little gesture before he turned to greet the next guest.
As he dressed for dinner in his comfortable room in the small Georgian dower house across the park, Campion was inclined to congratulate himself on his quarters. Underhill itself was a little too much of the ancient monument for strict comfort.
He had reached the tie stage when Lance appeared. He came in very elegant indeed and highly pleased with himself. Campion diagnosed the symptoms immediately and remained irritatingly incurious.
Lance sat down before the open fire and stretched his sleek legs.
“It’s not even as if I were a goodlooking blighter, you know,” he observed invitingly when the silence had become irksome to him. “In fact, Campion, when I consider myself I simply can’t understand it. Did I so much as speak to the girl?”
“I don’t know,” said Campion, concentrating on his dressing. “Did you?”
“No.” Lance was passionate in his denial. “Not a word. The hard-faced female with the inky fingers and the walrus mustache was telling me her life story all the way home in the car. This dear little poppet with the eyes was nothing more than a warm bundle at my side. I give you my dying oath on that. And yet—well, it’s extraordinary, isn’t it?”
Campion did not turn round. He could see the artist quite well through the mirror in front of him. Lance had a sheet of notepaper in his hand and was regarding it with that mixture of feigned amusement and secret delight which was typical of his eternally youthful spirit.
“Extraordinary.” he repeated, glancing at Campion’s unresponsive back. “She had nice eyes. Like licked brandy-balls.”
“Exactly,” agreed the lean man by the dressing table. “I thought she seemed very taken up with her fiance, young Master Groome, though,” he added tactlessly.
“Well, I noticed that, you know,” Lance admitted, forgetting his professions of disinterest. “She hardly recognized my existence in the train. Still, there’s absolutely no accounting for women. I’ve studied ‘em all my life and never understood ‘em yet. I mean to say, take this case in point. That kid ignored me. avoided me, looked through me. And yet look at this. I found it in my room when I came up to change just now.”
Campion took the note with a certain amount of distaste. Lovely women were invariably stooping to folly, it seemed, but even so he could not accustom himself to the spectacle. The message was very brief. He read it at a glance and for the first time that day he was conscious of that old familiar flicker down the spine as his experienced nose smelted trouble. He re-read the three lines.
“There is a sundial on a stone pavement just off the drive. We saw it from the car. I’ll wait ten minutes there for you half an hour after the party breaks up tonight.”
There was neither signature nor initial, and the summons broke off as baldly as it had begun.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Lance had the grace to look shamefaced.
“Astounding.” Campion’s tone was flat. “Staggering, old boy. Er—fishy.”
“Fishy?”
“Yes, don’t you think so?” Campion was turning over the single sheet thoughtfully and there was no amusement in the pale eyes behind his hornrimmed spectacles. “How did it arrive?”
“In an unaddressed envelope. I don’t suppose she caught my name. After all, there must be some people who don’t know it yet.” Lance was grinning impudently. “She’s batty, of course. Not safe out and all the rest of it. But I liked her eyes and she’s very young.”
Campion perched himself on the edge of the table. He was still very serious.
“It’s disturbing, isn’t it?” he said. “Not nice. Makes one wonder.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Lance retrieved his property and tucked it into his pocket. “She’s young and foolish, and it’s Christmas.”
Campion did not appear to have heard him. “I wonder,” he said. “I should keep the appointment, I think. It may be unwise to interfere, but yes, I rather think I should.”
“You’re telling me.” Lance was laughing. “I may be wrong, of course,” he added defensively, “but I think that’s a cry for help. The poor girl evidently saw that I looked a dependable sort of chap and—er—having her back against the wall for some reason or other she turned instinctively to the stranger with the kind face. Isn’t that how you read it?”
