"Why do you want to get rid of it?"
"Oh, I"m thinking of leaving this part of the world in a few weeks"
time. No good carting a car as far as I"m going--too d.a.m.ned expensive."
"And where are you going?"
The doctor stood blinking down on the young man with his odd, sluggish little eyes. He appeared tired and not specially interested, yet there was a sort of negative friendliness in his att.i.tude which Esther had not seen before.
"I may go out to the Argentine. There"s a job offered me out there."
"South America!"
The sleepy gaze flickered over the whole slight, dapper person of the captain, betraying frank scorn.
"So that"s it, is it?" He began feeling in his pocket for a cigarette, adding as an after-thought, "I suppose you"ve made up your mind about it?"
"Not entirely. But there"s no point in sticking around here ... as things are. There"s precious little, I want to tell you, between me and starvation. Still, I"m taking a few weeks to think things over."
"Won"t you lose the post if you let so much time go by?" inquired the doctor, with the heavy air of making conversation.
His friend"s lip curled in easy contempt.
"Not _this_ post," he answered laconically, and turned his attention to the sideboard. After a brief inspection of the array of bottles he called through the little pa.s.sage that led to the kitchen:
"Jacques! Here then! Got any lemons?"
"_Des citrons? Oui, monsieur, j"en ai._"
"Squeeze a couple and bring me the juice."
"_Entendu, monsieur._"
With a thoughtful face Holliday measured equal parts of gin and Cointreau into the shaker. Esther found herself watching the operation with interest. Still busy, he remarked without turning:
"Old Clifford seems a bit seedy."
The doctor had sunk heavily into a chair at the top of a table with a sigh of relaxation. He replied:
"Yes, so his wife mentioned to me a few days ago, but I have not seen him."
"I have. Last night. I was there to dinner. The old boy was quite off his feed, and pushed off to bed about nine o"clock. I daresay you"ll be hearing from him before long."
Sartorius yawned. "I daresay," he agreed, and broke off an end of the long stick of bread before him. It occurred to Esther that it was the first time she had seen him sit down properly at the table for a meal.
The lemon-juice arriving at this point, the expert added it to the contents of the shaker and agitated the whole violently.
"It"s a long, long way to that Argentine ranch," he remarked pensively.
"See here, doctor, you"re a fa.r.s.eeing man. On general principles, what would you advise?"
The doctor looked up from his contemplation of the mustard-pot, and it seemed to Esther that his dull eyes met and held the young man"s shallow hazel ones for an appreciable s.p.a.ce of time.
"Well," he said at length, "do you particularly want to go?"
"Like h.e.l.l," was the brief reply.
"H"m! In that case I should certainly leave the decision till the last possible moment. There"s always some slight chance of something"s turning up."
"No! Do you think there is, though?" demanded Holliday eagerly, stopping with the shaker in his hands.
"On general principles."
The visitor"s face brightened noticeably. Whistling a bar or two of "Gigolette" he poured out two gla.s.ses of a pale straw-coloured liquid, then with the shaker poised over a third gla.s.s looked inquiringly at Esther.
"What about you?" he invited.
Esther hesitated and succ.u.mbed to the temptation. After all, why not?
"As a resident of a dry country," she said, smiling, "I can"t refuse."
He filled the gla.s.s and handed it to her just as Jacques entered, bearing the hot and savoury _omelette aux champignons_.
"Well!"--and Captain Holliday raised his gla.s.s and his left eyebrow simultaneously with easy nonchalance, "may we all get what we want!"
"Hear, hear," murmured the doctor mechanically, and drank his c.o.c.ktail at a gulp.
Esther sipped hers, finding it a subtle and delicious concoction.
Later she decided it was a potent one as well. Soon she observed that a hint of unwonted animation crept into the doctor"s manner and indeed as the meal progressed he became almost gay, though how much of the change was due to the c.o.c.ktail and how much to the company she could not tell. Moreover he ate steadily and voraciously. She thought she had never seen a man eat so much, it was like stoking an engine.
Holliday, on the contrary, had little appet.i.te for the excellent meal and seemed strung up with a kind of nervous excitement.
Afterwards this scene recurred to her more than once, showing to her imagination like a close-up on the screen. In the light of subsequent happenings it held for her a curious fascination. She could at any time shut her eyes and see the three of them, so ill-a.s.sorted, sitting around the table in that bourgeois dining-room, eating and conversing, herself one of the party by accident and virtually ignored by the other two, yet linked with them in a sort of casual camaraderie that was somehow established when she accepted the c.o.c.ktail. Out of all that followed, no incident remained for her so sinister and at the same time so paradoxically trivial and absurd as this chance gathering at _dejeuner_.
CHAPTER VI
One bright afternoon about ten days after this the Rolls Royce of the Cliffords drew up at the doctor"s door, and when the sandy-haired chauffeur had descended and rung the bell, there emerged from the car in somewhat ceremonial order Lady Clifford, her sister-in-law, and Sir Charles himself. To the casual eye it would appear that the first of these three could have no possible connection with the other two, any more than a bird of paradise would have with a pair of rooks.
"She has brought the old man with her this time," confided Jacques to Esther _en pa.s.sant_, having admitted the trio to the salon. "He is a very bad colour, that man! I don"t like his look."
Nor did Esther, when a moment later she opened the salon door and caught her first glimpse of Sir Charles, a gaunt, heavily built old man with sunken eyes, unnaturally bright, and a dry, yellowish skin tightly stretched across his prominent cheek bones. He sat leaning forward in his chair, wearing his heavy overcoat with the fur-lined collar drawn up about his thin neck and his big bony hands clasped so rigidly over the handle of his stick that the knuckles shone blanched and polished.
He shivered slightly at the opening of the door.
"Here, Charlie, put on your cap," commanded his sister quickly. "This room is always creepy."
"Yes, do put it on," murmured Lady Clifford gently, taking a grey tweed cap from the table and trying to fit it on his head.
He brushed her aside with a petulant gesture.