Again Guy Markenmore looked along the passage. While he looked, Braxfield looked at him. He had altered little, thought Braxfield. He had always been noted since boyhood, for his good looks: he was still good-looking at thirty-five; tall, slim, dark, intense of gaze; the sort of man to attract and interest women. But he looked like a man who had lived hard; a man who had seen things on the seamy side of life, and there was a sinister expression about his fine eyes and the lines of the mouth, scarcely concealed by a carefully kept dark moustache, which would have warned watchful observers to put little trust in him. Eyes and lips alike were wary and keen as they turned again on the butler.
“Come on to your pantry, Braxfield,” he said quietly. “Fasten that door.”
He walked rapidly up the passage and turned into the corridor when he had issued the order: when the butler, after discharging it, followed him, he stood just within the pantry, holding the door in his hand. And after Braxfield, still upset and wondering, had entered, Guy put the door to and turned the key.
“Look here!” he said in a low voice, motioning Braxfield to the fireside and its cheery blaze, “I want to know something—I thought I saw somebody as I came along. You’ll know. Is John Harborough home again?”
Braxfield felt his perceptions quicken at the tone of this question. He nodded, searching Guy’s face.
“Yes, sir!” he answered. “Came home today—this very afternoon.”
“He’d heard your father was ill, Mr. Guy—he came to ask about him.”
“Not—not to my knowledge, sir. He—he saw Mr. Harry and Miss Valencia.”
“Has he come back for—for good? To settle down?”
Braxfield was wondering what these questions meant, and his face showed his wonder. But Guy’s face had become sphinx-like. He turned away from the butler, took off his smart hat, overcoat, and gloves, threw them into an easy chair in a corner, and drawing a case from his breast-pocket, selected a cigar, and leisurely lighted it. Braxfield knew enough of cigars to know that that was an expensive one; he knew, too, that as far as appearances went the lost son, of seven years’ silence had not come home like a prodigal. Guy was dressed in the height of fashion; his grey tweed suit, bearing the unmistakable stamp of Savile Row, stood out in striking contrast to the worn and ancient garments in which Harry Markenmore went about the old place. And on the hand which raised a match to the cigar glittered a fine diamond ring, acting as a sort of keeper to another ring, of curious workmanship and appearance, on the third finger.