Guy read the paragraph through unmoved, to the outer eye, though
with a whitening face, and then took up the dog-eared "Bradshaw"
that lay close by upon the little oak writing-table. His hand
trembled. One glance at the map, however, set his mind at rest.
"I thought so," he said quietly. "Cyril wouldn't be there. It's
beyond his beat. Lavington's the fourth station this way on the
up-line from Chetwood. Cyril's stopping at Tilgate town, you know--I
heard from him on Saturday--and the bit he's now working at's in
Chetwood Forest. He couldn't get lodgings at Chetwood itself, so
he's put up for the present at the White Lion, at Tilgate, and runs
over by train every day to Warnworth. It's three stations away--four
off Lavington. He'd have been daubing for an hour in the wood by
that time."
"Well, I didn't attach any great importance to it myself," Nevitt
went on, unconcerned. "I thought most likely Cyril wouldn't be
there. But still I felt you'd like, at any rate, to know about it."
"Oh, of course," Guy answered, still scanning the map in "Bradshaw"
close. "He couldn't have been there; but one likes to know. I think,
indeed, to make sure, I'll telegraph to Tilgate. Naturally, when a
man's got only one relation in the whole wide world--without being
a sentimentalist--that one relation means a good deal in life to
him. And Cyril and I are more to one another, of course, than most
ordinary brothers." He bit his thumb. "Still, I can't imagine how
he could possibly be there," he went on, glancing at "Bradshaw" once
more. "You see, if he went to work, he'd have got out at Warnworth;
and if he meant to come to town to consult his dentist, he'd have
taken the 9.30 express straight through from Tilgate, which gets
up to London twenty-five minutes earlier."
"Well, but why to consult his dentist in particular?" Nevitt asked
with a smile. He had very white teeth, and he smiled accordingly
perhaps a little oftener than was quite inevitable. "You Warings
are so absolute. I never knew any such fellows in my life as you
are. You decide things so beforehand. Why mightn't he have been
coming up to town, for example, to see a friend, or get himself
fresh colours?"
"Oh, I said 'to consult his dentist,'" Guy answered, in the most
matter-of-fact voice on earth, suppressing a tremor, "because you
know I've had toothache off and on myself, one day with another,
for the whole last fortnight. And it's a tooth that never ached
with either of us before-this one, you see"--he lifted his lip with
his forefinger--"the second on the left after the one we've lost.
If Cyril was coming up to town at all, I'm pretty sure it'd be his
tooth he was coming up to see about. I went to Eskell about mine
myself last Wednesday."
The elder man seated himself and leaned back in his chair, with
his violin in his lap; then he surveyed his friend long and curiously.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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