They were now walking side by side slowly away from the gate, down a
broad, well-kept carriage road, the lodge-keeper staring after them.
"Do you know Sir Angus Kinross?" asked Katty's companion suddenly.
She gave him a curious, side-glance look. "I saw him several times last
winter," she said hesitatingly. "But, Mr. Howard?--I don't like him!"
"Neither do I." He snapped the words out. "I could have told Scotland
Yard a good deal if Kinross had taken the trouble to be civil to me--but
he sent me down a fellow whose manner I exceedingly resented."
There followed a long pause. Katty became unpleasantly aware
that this strange-looking man--she wondered how old he
was--sixty-five?--seventy?--was looking at her with a rather
pitiless scrutiny.
"I can see that you are anxious to know the truth," he observed. He
added: "Are you aware that the reward has just been withdrawn?"
"No, I didn't know that. But I'm not surprised," she said.
She glanced at him, puzzled, and a little nervous. His keen eyes,
grey-green in tint, were much younger than the rest of his face.
"I think I know part of the truth," he went on. "And perhaps you will be
able to supply the other part, Mrs. Winslow. I confess to a certain
curiosity about the matter."
They were now within sight of a charming-looking old house. It was
charming, and yet there was something forlorn about its very perfection.
The low, oak, nail-studded front door was shut, not hospitably open--as
is generally the case with the door of a Yorkshire country house. But
Mr. Greville Howard pulled the bell, and at once the door was opened by
a respectable-looking manservant.
"I am taking this lady to my study, and I do not wish to be disturbed
till I ring. When I ring you can bring tea."
Katty followed her host through a short, vaulted passage into a square
hall. It was a beautiful apartment, in keeping with the delicate,
austere charm of the house outside. And round the hall there were some
fine Dutch easel pictures.
Out of the hall there opened various doors. Greville Howard pushed open
one, already ajar, and Katty walked through into what she at once
realised was her companion's own habitual living-room.
With all her cleverness, and her acquaintance with the art-furnishing
jargon of the day, Katty would have been surprised to know the value of
the contents of this comparatively small room. It contained some notable
examples of the best period of early French Empire furniture. This was
specially true of the mahogany and brass inlaid dwarf bookcases which
ran round three sides of the apartment. Above the bookcases, against the
turquoise-blue silk with which the walls were hung, were a number of
Meissonier's paintings of Napoleon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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