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Alric Veycourt’s eyes narrowed.
“Have you any suspicion as to who this person—or persons— might be?” he asked.
The man hesitated for a moment.
“Go on,” the Squire urged. “You’re quite at liberty to speak out.”
“I have instructions to—interview your nephew, sir,” the man admitted.
Veycourt’s hands clenched.
“I suspected as much!” He threw a hastily pencilled note across the desk towards the stranger. “I’m not trying to interfere with the law,” he said, “but I think you’re going to have some considerable trouble to find—my nephew for questioning or anything else. He didn’t return here last night, and this note arrived for me this morning.” He paused, glancing angrily at the other, as if the man was in some way responsible for the blow which had just been dealt to his pride. “You see what it says,” he went on, indicating the note. “He must have realised that things were getting too hot for him, and so he decided to clear out. ‘Gone abroad,’ he says!”
“You have no idea where, sir?”
“None whatever.”
Alric Veycourt turned in his chair with a gesture which his visitor took as one of dismissal.
“I guess he’s made for the Continent,” the man said, rising. “No doubt he imagines he can clear up the rest of the money due to him there. We have no definite evidence against him and there was no question of arrest yet, but we had hoped to trace the men at the head of this group through him. Good-day, sir, and thank you.”
Alric Veycourt sank back in his seat when the door had closed on his visitor, and his eyes fell on the postmark on the envelope which had brought his nephew’s letter. Glasgow, he read, and the date and time of posting.
Stupid of the fellow not to have asked about that, he thought. Edmund’s destination was probably America, Alric Veycourt stretched forward and crumpled the note and envelope in his hand, casting it into the waste-paper basket beneath his desk, and so hoped that he had closed what had been, from first to last, a most unpleasant episode in his life.
It was ten minutes later that Mead tapped on the study door to announce another visitor.
Those ten minutes alone seemed to have changed the Squire into an old man. The habitual fiery look had gone from his eyes and they looked tired and a little dispirited. He smiled, though, when the butler announced Ruth.
“Show her in, Mead,” he commanded.
Ruth thought she would remember for ever afterwards the look on his face as his eyes went beyond her to rest on his son for the first time in over eight years. John did not hesitate, but went straight to his father and clasped his hand.
She left them then, slipping out unnoticed to wait in the hall. The great main door was open and the perfume of August’s flowers drifted in to her from the garden—the scent of stocks and roses and the first chrysanthemums. There was the sound of laughter, too—a girl’s voice, gay and fresh, familiar, but curiously unaffected. Ruth knew that it was Valerie Grenton, and a moment later she saw her framed in the arch of the doorway, a striking figure in white from head to foot, with her arm linked in that of Victor Monset.
“You promised to let me tell the first person we met,” Valerie said, pulling the artist forward. She halted before Ruth. “We’ve just got engaged,” she smiled. “We’re going to be married before Christmas!”
So much happiness! Was it any wonder, Ruth thought, as she congratulated the happy Valerie and quietly triumphant Victor, that the old house glowed with it?
When the door of the study opened and John came out to invite them all into his father’s room, toasts were drunk to two engagements and a reunion. Then Alric Veycourt, leaning heavily on his stick, with his son supporting him on the other side, rose to his feet. He raised his glass.
“To Ruth’s father,” he proposed, “and his speedy recovery.”
THE END
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