Campion became separated from Lance and was looking for him anxiously when he saw him at last in one of the cars, with the novelist on one side and the girl with brandy-ball eyes on the other, Victor Preen making up the ill-assorted four.
Since Campion was an unassuming sort of person he was relegated to the brake with Boule himself, the shy young man, and the whole of the luggage. Boule introduced them awkwardly and collapsed into a seat, wiping the beads from off his forehead with a relief which was a little too blatant to be tactful.
Campion, who had learned that the shy young man’s name was Peter Groome, made a tentative inquiry of him as they sat jolting shoulder to shoulder in the back of the car. He nodded.
“Yes, it’s the same family,” he said. “Cookham’s sister married a brother of my father’s. I’m some sort of relation, I suppose.”
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 the Preen, you know.” He sighed. “It seems very young to be a millionaire, doesn’t it?”
“Obscenely so,” said Mr. Peter Groome abruptly, and returned to his despairing contemplation of the landscape.
Underhill was en fête to receive them. As soon as Campion observed the preparations, his sympathy for young Mr. Groome increased, for to a jaundiced eye Lady Florence’s display might well have proved as dispiriting as Preen’s bank balance. Florence had “gone all Dickens,” as she said herself at the top of her voice, linking her arm through Campion’s, clutching the R. A. with her free hand, and capturing Lance with a bright birdlike eye.
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 fiancé, 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?”
“Since you press me, no. Not exactly,” said Campion, and as they walked over to the house together he remained thoughtful and irritatingly uncommunicative.
Florence Cookham excelled herself that evening. Her guests were exhorted “to be young again,” with the inevitable result that Underhill contained a company of irritated and exhausted people long before midnight.
One of her ladyship’s more erroneous beliefs was that she was a born organizer, and that the real secret of entertaining people lay in giving everyone something to do. Thus Lance and the R. A. —now even more startled-looking than ever—found themselves superintending the decoration of the great tree, while the girl with the brandy-ball eyes conducted a small informal dance in the drawing room, the lady novelist scowled over the bridge table, and the ballet star refused flatly to arrange amateur theatricals.
Only two people remained exempt from this tyranny. One was Sir Philip himself, who looked in every now and again, ready to plead urgent work awaiting him in his study whenever his wife pounced upon him, and the other was Mr. Campion, who had work to do on his own account and had long mastered the difficult art of self-effacement. Experience had taught him that half the secret of this maneuver was to keep discreetly on the move and he strolled from one part to another, always ready to look as if he belonged to any one of them should his hostess’s eye ever come to rest upon him inquiringly.
For once his task was comparatively simple. Florence was in her element as she rushed about surrounded by breathless assistants, and at one period the very air in her vicinity seemed to have become thick with colored paper wrappings, yards of red ribbons, and a colored snowstorm of little address tickets as she directed the packing of the presents for the Tenants’ Tree, a second monster which stood in the ornamental barn beyond the kitchens.
Campion left Lance to his fate, which promised to be six or seven hours’ hard labor at the most moderate estimate, and continued his purposeful meandering. His lean figure drifted among the company with an apparent aimlessness which was deceptive. There was hidden urgency in his lazy movements and his pale eyes behind his spectacles were inquiring and unhappy.
He found Patricia Bullard dancing with Preen, and paused to watch them as they swung gracefully by him. The man was in a somewhat flamboyant mood, flashing his smile and his noisy witticisms about him after the fashion of his kind, but the girl was not so content. As Campion caught sight of her pale face over her partner’s sleek shoulder his eyebrows rose. For an instant he almost believed in Lance’s unlikely suggestion. The girl actually did look as though she had her back to the wall. She was watching the doorway nervously and her shiny eyes were afraid.
Campion looked about him for the other young man who should have been present, but Peter Groome was not in the ballroom, nor in the great hall, nor yet among the bridge tables in the drawing room, and half an hour later he had still not put in an appearance.
Campion was in the hall himself when he saw Patricia slip into the anteroom which led to Sir Philip’s private study, that holy of holies which even Florence treated with a wholesome awe. Campion had paused for a moment to enjoy the spectacle of Lance, wild eyed and tight lipped, wrestling with the last of the blue glass balls and tinsel streamers on the Guests’ Tree, when he caught sight of the flare of her silver skirt disappearing round a familiar doorway under one branch of the huge double staircase.
It was what he had been waiting for. and yet when it came his disappointment was unexpectedly acute, for he too had liked her smile and her brandy-ball eyes. The door was ajar when he reached it, and he pushed it open an inch or so farther, pausing on the threshold to consider the scene within. Patricia was on her knees before the paneled door which led into the inner room and was trying somewhat ineffectually to peer through the keyhole.
Campion stood looking at her regretfully, and when she straightened herself and paused to listen, with every line of her young body taut with the effort of concentration, he did not move.
Sir Philip’s voice amid the noisy chatter behind him startled him, however, and he swung round to see the old man talking to a group on the other side of the room. A moment later the girl brushed past him and hurried away.
Campion went quietly into the anteroom. The study door was still closed and he moved over to the enormous period fireplace which stood beside it. This particular fireplace, with its carved and painted front, its wrought iron dogs and deeply recessed inglenooks, was one of the showpieces of Underhill.
At the moment the fire had died down and the interior of the cavern was dark, warm and inviting. Campion stepped inside and sat down on the oak settee, where the shadows swallowed him. He had no intention of being unduly officious, but his quick ears had caught a faint sound in the inner room and Sir Philip’s private sanctum was no place for furtive movements when its master was out of the way. He had not long to wait.
A few moments later the study door opened very quietly and someone came out. The newcomer moved across the room with a nervous, unsteady tread, and paused abruptly, his back to the quiet figure in the inglenook. Campion recognized Peter Groome and his thin mouth narrowed. He was sorry. He had liked the boy.
The youngster stood irresolute. He had his hands behind him, holding in one of them a flamboyant parcel wrapped in the colored paper and scarlet ribbon which littered the house. A sound from the hall seemed to fluster him for he spun round, thrust the parcel into the inglenook which was the first hiding place to present itself, and returned to face the new arrival. It was the girl again. She came slowly across the room, her hands outstretched and her face raised to Peter’s.
In view of everything, Campion thought it best to stay where he was, nor had he time to do anything else. She was speaking urgently, passionate sincerity in her low voice.
“Peter, I’ve been looking for you. Darling, there’s something I’ve got to say and if I’m making an idiotic mistake then you’ve got to forgive me. Look here, you wouldn’t go and do anything silly, would you? Would you, Peter? Look at me.”
“My dear girl.” He was laughing unsteadily and not very convincingly with his arms around her. “What on earth are you talking about?”
She drew back from him and peered earnestly into his face.
“You wouldn’t, would you? Not even if it meant an awful lot. Not even if for some reason or other you felt you had to. Would you?”
He turned from her helplessly, a great weariness in the lines of his sturdy back, but she drew him round, forcing him to face her.
“Would he what, my dear?”
Florence’s arch inquiry from the doorway separated them so hurriedly that she laughed delightedly and came briskly into the room, her gray curls a trifle disheveled and her draperies flowing.
“Too divinely young, I love it!” she said devastatingly. “I must kiss you both. Christmas is the time for love and youth and all the othe
r dear charming things, isn’t it? That’s why I adore it. But my dears, not here. Not in this silly poky little room. Come along and help me, both of you, and then you can slip away and dance together later on. But don’t come in this room. This is Philip’s dull part of the house. Come along this minute. Have you seen my precious tree? Too incredibly distinguished, my darlings, with two great artists at work on it. You shall both tie on a candle. Come along.”
She swept them away like an avalanche. No protest was possible. Peter shot a single horrified glance towards the fireplace, but Florence was gripping his arm; he was thrust out into the hall and the door closed firmly behind him.
Campion was left in his corner with the parcel less than a dozen feet away from him on the opposite bench. He moved over and picked it up. It was a long flat package wrapped in holly-printed tissue. Moreover, it was unexpectedly heavy and the ends were unbound.
He turned it over once or twice, wrestling with a strong disinclination to interfere, but a vivid recollection of the girl with the brandy-ball eyes, in her silver dress, her small pale face alive with anxiety, made up his mind for him and, sighing, he pulled the ribbon.
The typewritten folder which fell on to his knees surprised him at first, for it was not at all what he had expected, nor was its title, “Report on Messrs. Anderson and Coleridge, Messrs. Saunders, Duval and Berry, and Messrs. Birmingham and Rose,” immediately enlightening, and when he opened it at random a column of incomprehensible figures confronted him. It was a scribbled pencil note in a precise hand at the foot of one of the pages which gave him his first clue.
“These figures are estimated by us to be a reliable forescast of this firm’s full working capacity,” he read, and after that he became very serious indeed.
Two hours later it was bitterly cold in the garden and a thin white mist hung over the dark shrubbery which lined the drive when Mr. Campion, picking his way cautiously along the clipped grass verge, came quietly down to the sundial walk. Behind him the gabled roofs of Underhill were shadowy against a frosty sky. There were still a few lights in the upper windows, but below stairs the entire place was in darkness.
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