Still muttering half audibly, he walked to the library door, which Parker held open for him, and even this he did not do without surreptitiously taking hold of Luke's hand and giving it a friendly squeeze. For a moment it seemed as if Luke would follow him, despite contrary orders. He paused, undecided, standing in the middle of the room, Louisa's kind gray eyes following his slightest movement.
Jim stolidly pulled the cigar box toward him, and Edie, with chin resting in both hands, looked sulky and generally out of sorts.
Parker – silent and correct of mien – had closed the library door behind his master, and now with noiseless tread he crossed the dining-room and opened the other door – the one that gave on the hall. Louisa instinctively turned her eyes from Luke and saw – standing in the middle of the hall – a young man in jacket suit and overcoat, who had looked up, with palpitating eagerness expressed in his face, the moment he caught sight of Parker.
It was the same man who had lifted his hat to Luke and to herself in Battersea Park this very morning. Luke saw him too and apparently also recognized him.
"That's why he bowed to us, Luke – in the park – you remember?" she said as soon as the door had once more closed on Parker and the visitor.
"Funny that you didn't know him," she continued since Luke had made no comment.
"I didn't," he remarked curtly.
"Didn't what?"
"I did not and do not know this man."
"Not Mr. Dobson's clerk?"
Luke did not answer but went out into the hall. Parker was standing beside the library door which he had just closed, having introduced the visitor into his lordship's presence.
"Parker," said Luke abruptly, "what made you tell his lordship that that young gentleman came from Mr. Dobson?"
The question had come so suddenly that Parker – pompous, dignified Parker – was thrown off his balance, and the reply which took some time in coming, sounded unconvincing.
"The young gentleman," he said slowly, "told me, Mr. Luke, that he came from Mr. Dobson."
"No, Parker," asserted Luke unhesitatingly, "he did nothing of the sort. He wanted to see his lordship and got you to help him concoct some lie whereby he could get what he wanted."
A grayish hue spread over Parker's pink and flabby countenance.
"Lord help me, Mr. Luke," he murmured tonelessly, "how did you know?"
"I didn't," replied Luke curtly. "I guessed. Now I know."
"I didn't think I was doing no harm."
"No harm by introducing into his lordship's presence strangers who might be malefactors?"
Already Luke, at Parker's first admission, had gone quickly to the library door. Here he paused, with his hand on the latch, uncertain if he should enter. The house was an old one, well-built and stout; from within came the even sound of a voice speaking quite quietly, but no isolated word could be distinguished. Parker was floundering in a quagmire of confused explanations.
"Malefactor, Mr. Luke!" he argued, "that young man was no malefactor. He spoke ever so nicely. And he had plenty of money about him. I didn't see I was doing no harm. He wanted to see his lordship and asked me to help him to it – "
"And," queried Luke impatiently, "paid you to help him, eh?"
"I thought," replied the man loftily ignoring the suggestion, "that taking in one of Mr. Dobson's cards that was lying in the tray could do no harm. I thought it couldn't do no harm. The young gentleman said his lordship would be very grateful to me when he found out what I'd done."
"And how grateful was the young gentleman to you, Parker?"
"To the tune of a five-pound note, Mr. Luke."
"Then as you have plenty of money in hand, you can pack up your things and get out of this house before I've time to tell his lordship."
"Mr. Luke – "
"Don't argue. Do as I tell you."
"I must take my notice from his lordship," said Parker, vainly trying to recover his dignity.
"Very well. You can wait until his lordship has been told."
"Mr. Luke – "
"Best not wait to see his lordship, Parker. Take my word for it."
"Very well, Mr. Luke."
There was a tone of finality in Luke's voice which apparently Parker did not dare to combat. The man looked confused and troubled. What had seemed to him merely a venial sin – the taking of a bribe for a trivial service – now suddenly assumed giant proportions – a crime almost, punished by a stern dismissal from Mr. Luke.
He went without venturing on further protest, and Luke, left standing alone in the hall, once more put his hand on the knob of the library door. This time he tried to turn it. But the door had been locked from the inside.
CHAPTER VIII
AND THUS THE SHADOW DESCENDED
From within the hum of a man's voice – speaking low and insistently – still came softly through. Luke, with the prodigality of youth, would have given ten years of his life for the gift of second-sight, to know what went on between those four walls beyond the door where he himself stood expectant, undecided, and more than vaguely anxious.
"Luke!"
It was quite natural that Louisa should stand here beside him, having come to him softly, noiselessly, like the embodiment of moral strength, and a common-sense which was almost a virtue.
"Uncle Rad," he said quietly, "has locked himself in with this man."
"Who is it, Luke?"
"The man who calls himself Philip de Mountford."
"How do you know?"
"How does one," he retorted, "know such things?"
"And Parker let him in?"
"He gave Parker a five-pound note. Parker is only a grasping fool. He concocted the story of Mr. Dobson and the lease. He is always listening at key-holes, and he knows that Mr. Dobson often sends up a clerk with papers for Uncle Rad's signature. Those things are not very difficult to manage. If one man is determined, and the other corruptible, it's done sooner or later."
"Is Lord Radclyffe safe with that man, do you think?"
"God grant it," he replied fervently.
Jim and Edie made a noisy irruption into the hall, and Luke and Louisa talked ostentatiously of indifferent things – the weather, Lent, and the newest play, until the young people had gathered up coats and hats and banged the street door to behind them, taking their breeziness, their optimism, away with them out into the spring air, and leaving the shadows of the on-coming tragedy to foregather in every angle of the luxurious house in Grosvenor Square.
And there were Luke de Mountford and Louisa Harris left standing alone in the hall; just two very ordinary, very simple-souled young people, face to face for the first time in their uneventful lives with the dark problem of a grim "might be." A locked door between them and the decisions of Fate; a world of possibilities in the silence which now reigned beyond that closed door.
They were – remember – wholly unprepared for it, untrained for any such eventuality. Well-bred and well-brought up, yet were they totally uneducated in the great lessons of life. It was as if a man absolutely untutored in science were suddenly to be confronted with a mathematical problem, the solution or non-solution of which would mean life or death to him. The problem lay in the silence beyond the locked door – silence broken now and again by the persistently gentle hum of the man's voice – the stranger's – but never by a word from Lord Radclyffe.
"Uncle Rad," said Luke at last in deep puzzlement, "has never raised his voice once. I thought that there would be a row – that he would turn the man out of the house. Dear old chap! he hasn't much patience as a rule."
"What