Chapter Eighteen. Which Teaches the Value of Silence.

The man’s audacity in coming there openly and boldly as Lord Stanchester’s guest so utterly astounded me that my very words froze upon my lips. Was this some further development of the intrigue in which one man had already lost his life?

Yet the visitor, bluff and hearty of speech, stood smiling at me with a calmness that was absolutely amazing. In the first instant, I wondered whether the dim light of the corridor had deceived me, or whether his face only resembled in a marked degree the dusty wayfarer who had refreshed himself with such gusto at the Stanchester Arms. Suddenly I recollected that although I had watched him on that hot afternoon, he had been unable to see me where I remained in the publican’s back parlour. There was a screen on purpose to hide any person seated in the little low inner room from the vulgar gaze of those in the tap-room, and at the moment he had faced me I had been peeping round the corner watching him. As I crossed the room he had seen my back, of course, but his self-assurance at the moment of our meeting made it quite plain that he did not recognise me.

The dim light having concealed my surprise, I quickly regained my self-possession, and with effusive greeting asked him into my room.

“Lord Stanchester, her ladyship, and most of the party are still out,” I explained. “There’s been a big shoot to-day. He asked me to entertain you until he returned,” I said, when he had seated himself in an armchair.

His tall figure seemed somewhat accentuated; his dark face, however, no longer wore that expression of weariness, but on the other hand he seemed hale and hearty, and had it not been for his rather rough speech, he might, in his well-cut suit of grey tweed, have passed for a gentleman.

“Oh! her ladyship is at home, then?” exclaimed the man who called himself Smeeton. “I’ve not yet had the pleasure of meeting her. In fact I haven’t been in England since the Earl’s marriage.”

“You’re a big-game hunter, I hear,” I remarked.

“I shoot a little,” was his modest rejoinder. “I shot with Lord Stanchester in Africa, one season, and we had fair sport. I notice that he has some of his trophies in the hall. By Jove!” he added. “He’s a splendid sportsman—doesn’t know what fear is. When we were together he got in some very tight corners. More than once it was only by mere chance that there was an heir left to the title. It wasn’t through recklessness either, but sheer pluck.”

He at any rate seemed to possess an unbounded admiration for my friend.

“You spend most of your time abroad?” I remarked, hoping to be able to gather some further facts.

“Well, yes. I have a house abroad,” he answered. “I find England a nice place to visit occasionally. There’s no place in the world like London, and no street like Piccadilly. But I’m a born wanderer, and am constantly on the wing in one or other of the five continents, yet at infrequent intervals I return to London, stand for a moment beside the lions in Trafalgar Square, and thank my lucky planet that I’m born an Englishman.” He laughed in his own bluff hearty way.

And this was the man of whom both Lolita and Lady Stanchester lived in such mortal terror!

He took a cigarette, lit it, and leaned back in the chair with an easy air of comfort, watching the smoke ascend.

“Pretty country about here, it seems,” he remarked presently. “The drive from Kettering station is a typical bit of rural English scenery. The green of the fields is refreshing after the scorched lands near the Equator. What’s the partridge season like? It seems an age since I shot a bird in England.”

“Oh! They’re fairly strong,” I replied. “The spell of wet was against them in the early season, but I believe the bags are quite up to the average.”

“And who’s here just now?”

I enumerated a list of his fellow-guests, in which I saw he was greatly interested.

“There’s Lord and Lady Cotterstock, Sir Henry Kipton, General Bryan, Captain Harper, the Honourable Violet Middleton, Count Bernheim, the German Ambassador, Lady Barford, Mr Samuel Woodford—”

“Sammy Woodford!” he exclaimed, interrupting me. “How long has he been here?”

“Ever since the opening of the season. Are you acquainted?”

“Well—not exactly,” he responded evasively. “I’ve heard a good deal about him from mutual friends. I’ll be glad to meet him. He’s the man who was in the Chitral affair. They swear by him in India.”

“So I believe,” I remarked, puzzled at the strange expression which crossed his features when I mentioned the name of the Earl’s very intimate friend. Mr Samuel Woodford, or “Sammy” to his intimates, was a district superintendent of Bengal Police, who was home on two years’ leave, a short well-preserved fair-headed man, a splendid athlete, a splendid shot, a splendid tennis and polo player. At Sibberton, where he had been a guest on several occasions, he was a great favourite, for he was always the merriest of the house-party and the keenest where sports or games were concerned.

Stanchester liked him because he was so perfectly honest and straight. The very look in his clear steel-grey eyes spoke truth, uprightness and a healthy life, and after their first meeting, one season at Cowes, his lordship had taken a great fancy to him.

“Anybody else I’m likely to know?” asked the visitor, with a carelessness which I knew was assumed.

“Well, there’s the Marchese Visconti, of the Italian Embassy, young Hugh Hibbert from Oxford, and ‘Poppa,’ as they call the newly-made Lord Cawnpore. And the honourable Lucy Whitwell, the daughter of Lady Drayton.”

“Is she here also?” he exclaimed, looking at me in quick surprise, which he did not attempt to disguise. “She’s with her mother, of course?”

I responded in the affirmative, and recognised by his manner that the presence of the lady in question somewhat nonplussed him. Possibly she might be acquainted with him as Richard Keene, seafarer, and he anticipated an awkwardness about his introduction as the celebrated big-game hunter.

I anticipated a scene when the Countess met him, and was inwardly glad that at least Lolita was absent.

Ought I to warn the Countess, I wondered? She had, I remembered, appealed to me to assist her, and surely in this I might. Nevertheless, if her husband were in ignorance of the man’s real identity, it was not likely that he would expose it willingly, or seek to injure her ladyship, or make any demonstration before her guests. On the one hand, I felt it my duty to give her warning of the stranger’s arrival, while on the other I feared that by doing so I might be defeating the ends which the man Keene might have in view, namely, the discovery of the real author of the crime in Sibberton Park.

Thus I remained, undecided, continuing to chat with him, watching his attitude carefully, and seeking to learn from his conversation something regarding his intentions.

“I should imagine Lord Stanchester to be a very lucky fellow,” he remarked presently. “If the photographs one sees in the papers are any criterion, her ladyship must be a very beautiful woman.”

“Yes,” I answered, smiling. He was very cleverly trying to impress upon me the fact that they had never met. His shrewd cunning showed itself in the sidelong glance he gave me.

At that moment the door suddenly opened, and Lord Stanchester, in his rough shooting kit, came in.

“Halloa, Smeeton! Welcome, my dear fellow!” he cried, wringing his guest’s hands. “Excuse my being away, won’t you? I’ve got a lot of people here, you know, and had to go out with them. By Jove! When you said good-bye to me and left the boat at Zanzibar, I never expected to see you again?”

“Well, here I am—turned up in England again, you see!” he replied merrily. “When we parted I had no intention of coming back. But somehow, on occasions, a longing for home comes over me, and I’m drawn back to London irresistibly. I see,” he added, “some of the trophies are up in the hall.”

“Yes,” laughed his lordship. “I had them all mounted. And often when I look at them, they bring back pleasant recollections of those many weeks we were together. Well,” he added, “I’m very pleased, Smeeton, to see you here at Sibberton—very. My wife knows you’re here; she’ll be delighted to meet you. I’m sure. I’ve often spoken of you, and told her how you saved me from that lioness. By Jove! I was within an ace of being done—and should have been if you hadn’t been such a dead shot.”

“Oh, that’s enough,” laughed the guest, modestly. “I can’t shoot partridges—that you’ll see.”

The Earl walked to the mantelshelf, took a cigarette, and lit it, saying—

“I see Woodhouse has been making you at home. This is Willoughby Woodhouse, my friend as well as my secretary,” he exclaimed. “I spoke of him, I believe.”

“You did, on several occasions,” and turning, Smeeton added, “I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr Woodhouse. His lordship said all sorts of kind things about you.”

But I scarcely heeded the newcomer’s remarks. I was wondering what would occur when he met her ladyship face to face.

“I want you to have a good time, my dear fellow,” exclaimed the Earl to his guest. “Just make yourself at home. You’ll find the house a big barrack of a place, too big in fact—but with the aid of the servants you’ll very soon discover the proper trails. If you don’t, just go into the nearest room, ring the bell and wait. That’s what most people do. My wife was fully six months before she could find her way about properly—it’s a fact! She wanted to shut up the place and live in the new wing. But,” he added, “the old guv’nor always kept it up properly, and I feel it my duty to do just as he did.”

That a cordial friendship existed between the pair was plain, and yet I had only once heard his lordship mention him, and that was in the smoking-room when daring feats of big-game hunting and the achievements of Selous and others were being discussed. Then he had declared that he knew a man that held his own with them all—a man named Smeeton, who had spent the greater part of his life exploring and hunting, some of whose trophies, sold to well-known dealers, were the finest in the world.

His lordship was never a boastful man, and had not referred at all to his acquaintance with this renowned hunter, nor to his own African exploits, which were in no way a mean achievement.

He had just ordered Slater to bring in whiskies-and-sodas, as it was his habit to have a “peg” before dressing, when there sounded out in the corridor a light quick footstep, and the scamper of a dog, and the next instant the door opened, and the Countess of Stanchester halted on the threshold, facing the man she held in such deadly fear—Richard Keene!