It was past midnight when Edward rose and opened the little fumed oak bureau that stood in the recess by the fire-place, and taking a sheet of the notepaper of Messrs. Kyser, Schultz & Company, wrote to Mr. Jasper Jarman telling him how glad Charlotte and himself were to hear that he proposed paying them a visit. He said that the firm for which he had the honour to work had at last awakened to the value of his services, and that a substantial increase of salary had given him the opportunity to receive his dear wife's uncle in a manner more fitted to his position, and that he remained with all good wishes, his uncle's most affectionate nephew, Edward Povey.
The little iron gate creaked again that night, and as Edward dropped the letter into the box at the corner of the terrace he told himself that his new life promised infinitely more possibilities than that to which he had been accustomed for the past fifteen years.
CHAPTER III
BORROWED PLUMAGE
The word phew may have a somewhat indefinite position in the English language, but there was no mistaking the tone in which Mr. Edward Povey said it as he sank wearily into the depths of one of the handsome green leather chairs that stood on either side of the fireplace in the dining-room at Adderbury Cottage, Bushey Heath. The tone of the ejaculation plainly indicated escape, or at any rate temporary relief from a severe nerve-racking strain.
At the further side of the table beneath the great crimson shaded lamp sat Charlotte, her fingers drumming a nervous tattoo upon the polished black oak beneath them. She, too, like her husband showed signs of severe nervous prostration. She raised her head as though about to answer Edward's ejaculation but sighed instead and fell again to her incessant tapping.
"Do stop that infernal row, Charlotte; you sit there and tap, tap, tap, as though—as though—well, give it a rest, it's getting nervy," then after a pause, "where have you put them?"
"Them?"
"Yes,—our honoured guests—making themselves at home, aren't they? Have you noticed, Charlotte, that there's been no mention of how long they're going to stay?"
"I've put them in the room above this. I expect it's old Kyser's room when he's at home here, all chintz and Sheraton."
Edward Povey sat silent for a few moments, gazing stolidly into the fire that was burning brightly in the old-fashioned fire-place. Then he got up and with hands thrust deep in his pockets strode up and down the room, his steps making no sound on the rich turkey carpet.
"It's going to be rather a harder job than I thought, Charlotte," he said at length, pausing in his walk and staring gloomily down at his wife, "so many things have turned out differently to what we thought. Why couldn't the old fool have said he was bringing Aunt Eliza? she's never come before when he's paid us a visit. I thought I should have fainted dead off just now when the old fellow asked me to show him which was the bath-room—he takes a cold tub every morning. Fancy not knowing where the bath-room is in one's own house. I had to open every door I came to and call out 'puss'—said I was looking for a kitten we'd lost—until I came to the right one, the fifth door I opened I think it was."
Edward passed his handkerchief over his forehead, then resumed.
"I blame you, Charlotte, for the unfortunate affair of the photo album. You should have put the book out of sight like you did the framed photos. I can't understand old Kyser keeping such a book full of crocks anyway, I'd be frightened to death of blackmail. You ought to have known that albums are Aunt Eliza's special weakness. She got hold of it at once and made me go through all the lot and tell her who they were and all about them." Edward grew hot at the remembrance. "It isn't easy to invent names and plausible histories for an assorted lot like that at a moment's notice—ugly lot of devils, too."
"The whole idea is yours remember, Edward."
"I know that, woman. Do you think it makes it any easier for me?—you shouldn't have let me—you——"
"You forget, Edward, you said that you were to be master in your own house."
"This isn't my own house, is it? But look here, Charlotte, it's not the least bit of good our arguing how we came to be here. We are here, and here we've got to stay and make the best of a bad job. All we need is a little bit of coaching in some of the minor details. Come over here."
Edward took up a richly chased candelabra and led the way to the fire-place. He removed the little paper shades and let the light fall full upon the portrait of an aged and benevolent-looking gentleman in a splendid old English gilt frame.
"See him, Charlotte; I thought all dinner time your uncle was going to ask who he was. He's sure to ask to-morrow, inquisitive old idiot, and we've got to be prepared. Listen. This old chap here is a Mr. Tobias Kenwick—that doesn't sound faked, does it?—not like Brown or Smith. If uncle asks what he was, say he was an engineer and that he's now retired and living in Peru. This old lady over the sideboard," went on Edward, crossing the room, "can be a friend of my mother's; say she's been dead some years now and that you forget her name but think it was Jane something. Any other portraits he asks about say we picked them up at a sale. By the bye, I must congratulate you on your excuse for the absence of the servant—the dying sister in the North of Scotland was an inspiration. I'd trot off to bed now, Charlotte my dear, if I were you. I'll be up presently. I've got a bit of hard thinking to get through here before I think of sleep."
Left to himself Edward ruminated deeply on the situation in which he had placed himself. Things had not turned out at all as he had expected and dilemmas had crowded thickly and fast upon him. The advent of Aunt Eliza had entirely unnerved him, and the amount of luggage which he had helped to take up to the bedroom seemed to him to be quite unnecessary for a short visit such as he had anticipated. Hitherto the visits of Uncle Jasper had been always the same, a night or two at the most and the days spent in business in London. His luggage had been invariably one suit case and a hatbox. But the present visit pointed more to a prolonged holiday than to a business trip. Edward tried to tell himself that there was nothing to fear, that Kyser would not return for a month, and that the secluded position of Adderbury Cottage was all in favour of the scheme; detection from the outside was a very remote chance.
Edward Povey, however, had not reckoned upon keeping the deception up for more than a few days at the most, neither had he reckoned upon the nerve strain. Tradesmen would be calling for orders—visitors, too, might reasonably be expected. A host of new possibilities arose before the perplexed vision of Edward Povey.
He could, of course, tell all comers that Mr. Kyser had lent him the house furnished. It was merely a small place used at intervals only by its wealthy owner. What more reasonable than that he should place it at the disposal of a friend? If he were alone, the guarding of the secret would be a simple matter, but there was Charlotte to complicate matters—Charlotte, who would innocently enough, by a chance word, upset his most carefully constructed fabrications.
From the hall came, the rich muffled chimes of a steel-faced Sheraton clock. It was midnight, and Edward rose, and crossing to the massive sideboard poured himself out a liberal allowance of brandy, splashing into the glass a little soda-water from a wired seltzogene. Then he proceeded to lock up.
Before barring the front door, he passed out on to the verandah-like porch and running his fingers through his thinning hair let the cool winds of the autumn night play upon the furnace of his forehead. It was very dark and the scene was desolate in the extreme. A solitary light twinkled out here and there from some window in the little village that lay beneath him in the