“Your sister believes it, and she is sane enough. However, I'm not going to discuss the question with you, my friend; or, for that matter, with anybody else.”
“That's all very well; the fact remains the same. Here's a fine house thrown away upon a bachelor, and there's Agnes, who would suit you down to the ground, waiting”--
“Waiting--waiting--that is exactly her position.”
“Waiting--yes; but for what? For what, I ask you as a man of the world? Your brother is dead, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and here you are alive and hearty. Doesn't it say something in the Bible that when a chap's brother dies”--
“Cyril,” said Dick Westwood, rising with an impatient jesture, “we'll have no more of this. I won't allow you to talk any longer in this strain. Shall we finish our cigars in the garden?”
“All right,” said Cyril, rising. But before they had taken a step toward the open French window, there seemed to arise from the earth the figure of a man, and he stood in the window space looking eagerly at each of them in turn.
|The stranger stood with his back to whatever light there was remaining in the sky, but Dick Westwood and his guest could see what manner of man he was. He wore a short beard and moustache. His clothes were shabby, and so was his soft hat. He might have been a foreman of mechanics just left off work.
Westwood stepped to the wall and switched on a lamp. Then he scrutinised the stranger closely. The man had entered the room through the French window.
“Who are you, and what do you want, my good fellow?” said Westwood. “It is customary for visitors to pull the bell at the hall door.”
“I pulled the bell. They told me you were at dinner and could not be disturbed, sir,” replied the man.
No one who heard him speak could think of him as an ordinary mechanics' foreman. He spoke like a person of some culture.
“And they told you what was true,” said Westwood. “Allow me to say that it is most unusual for a total stranger to force himself into a house in this fashion. I must ask you to go away at once unless you have something of importance to communicate to me; unless--good heavens! is it possible that you come with some news of my brother?”
Dick had given a start as the idea seemed to strike him. Cyril also started, and looked at the stranger narrowly.