"Ah!" Manning shook his head. "I'm afraid that would be telling too much."
"All right. When are you goin' to disappear?"
A rush of emotion surged into Manning's face. He repressed it immediately. But Sir Henry Merrivale saw affection, and hope, and even a kind of wistfulness, as he looked at the children of whom—whether he swore it or not—he was so obviously fond now.
"Oh, I shall disappear when you least expect it," Manning answered. "Shall we go in to dinner?"
6
"Mr. Norton! Mr. Norton!"
Cy awoke with a shock, from deep but troubled sleep, into daylight and brilliant sunshine. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was.
He was in a large bedroom at the rear of the house, wearing a pair of Manning's pyjamas and sharing the bedroom with Sir Henry Merrivale. There now stood, between Cy's bed and H.M.'s, a shortish broad-shouldered man in a white coat. The newcomer, with a broad grin, was holding out a large breakfast tray.
"I'm Stuffy," the newcomer announced, with the air of one willing to talk at any length. "I been with Mr. Manning, now, for twenty-one years. Yes, sir, he's my manager now. Here's yer brekfus."
"Thanks," said Cy, sitting up and taking the loaded tray across his knees. "What time is it?"
"Eight o'clock," warned Stuffy darkly, as though Cy had been sleeping until past noon.
You might have taken Stuffy for only a middle-aged man, with that leathery face and bright eye and enthusiasm, if rheumatism had not nipped him and if his close-cropped hair had not been pure white.
"Miss Jean," he went on, "says she'd like for you to go down to the pool, when you've finished yer brekfus." On the bed Stuffy threw a pair of black swimming trunks. Then he bent forward conspiratorially.
"Where's Hank?" he muttered.
"Hank who?"
Stuffy seemed convulsed by some hidden mirth.
"Lord," he said, "we didn't call him 'Sir Henry when I knew hm. That’d be (lemme see, now!) that’d be 12, 13, and 14. We was training at Jacksonville then. But s-h-sh! Don't say nothing to nobody! I'm keeping it quiet See you later;"
"Right! Deep secret!" agreed Cy, wondering what the secret was.
This must be the former ballplayer of whom Jean had spoken. Cy, in his own youth only a fair but fanatical school and college player, could not place the nickname. But as Stuffy went towards the door, a darting thought made Cy cry out - "Stuffy!"
The results, as regards Stuffy's agility, were sensational. "Mr. Manning!" said Cy. "Is he gone?" "Gone?"
"Has he disappeared?"
"Holy Moses," muttered Stuffy, reproachfully. "You hadn't ought to make me jump like that Mr. Manning's not gone, 'cause he didn't go to the office today. He's trimming the hedge on the south side now."
"Oh. I just wondered. Sorry."
The door closed.
Cy glanced across at H.M.'s bed. The covers were thrown back, and on them rested a breakfast tray polished clean of everything eatable. From behind another closed door, leading to a bathroom, Cy heard the sudden rush of a shower bath, followed by hoots and roars rather suggestive of Father Neptune. He had no doubt as to H.M.'s whereabouts.
Leaning back against the headboard of the bed, he wished they weren't in such a devil of a mess. Crystal had been nearly in hysterics, and Jean not much better, after dinner last night. Most distinctly he remembered Crystal's voice:
"If you're never going to see us again, what difference does it make whether it's only a vanishing trick?"
Or once again Manning's measured tones:
"I don't expect any affection from any of you. Why should I expect it?"
Other scenes Cy Norton, as he ate his breakfast, shut away from his mind. It still surprised him that you could get all the food you wanted in this country: bacon and eggs like these, and real white bread. As for Crystal, the infernally disturbing Crystal...
At this point in his meditations, the door of the bathroom opened. Out of the bathroom, in grandeur, stalked Sir Henry Merrivale in a bathing suit.
Cy took one look, and swallowed coffee the wrong way.
The bathing suit, of a pattern circa 1910, had horizontal stripes of alternate red and white. There was a suggestion of sleeve at the shoulder, and the trunks clung tightly to the leg nearly to the knee. H.M.'s arms and shoulders, still thick and powerful like his legs, carried forward his red-and-white corporation like Nelson's flagship going into action.
"Ahem!" said the great man.
He surveyed himself, over his shoulder, in a full-length mirror, coughed, and then assumed a majestic stance at the foot of Cy’s bed.
"I'm goin' for a swim," he announced.
"So I s-see. S-so..."
"What's the matter with you, son? Whaf s so goddam funny?"
"Well," Cy asked frankly, "did you keep that in mothballs for all these years, or do you get 'em made for you?"
"I get 'em made," said H.M. austerely. "I like the old ways."
He pointed to his Gladstone bag, whose name tag was a large cardboard label inscribed in red letters (doubtless to the pleasure of steamship companies) only with the word ME.
"It's a ruddy good thing," said H.M., "I got my bag back. I like my own razor."
"Yes," agreed Cy, looking him in the eye, "you got your bag back. But nobody knows how it came back. It was found in the kitchen, by the cook, and the revolver was on top of it. The maid (as maids naturally do) put it in the best place for somebody to fall over it. Nobody will acknowledge owning or even seeing that gun. The gun, by the way," Cy added, "being now put away in an unlocked drawer in the library."
"Well... now!" H.M. made a fussed gesture. "Are you goin' to stop in bed all day, or are you goin' to go down to the pool with me?"
"I’ll be with you," Cy promised, "as soon as I get a shave and a bath."
Pushing aside the breakfast tray, he went to one of the two windows facing eastwards and overlooking the back of the house.
Not a sound, not a movement, stirred in house or grounds. It was the softest of summer days, ripe with a fragrance of grass and trees, warm without yet being hot The close-cropped grass sparkled in places from a rain which had continued half the night.
Behind the house lay a grass terrace, with metal chairs. It was a shallow terrace, too. Only two steps led down to the close-cropped grass round the swimming pool itself. The pool, made of smooth grey stone rather than tile, was some sixty feet long by forty feet broad; its long side lay parallel with the back of the house. Beyond the pool, past another strip of grass, a high thick row of rhododendron bushes also ran parallel to the long side.
And a wide but short path, straight through the middle of the rhododendrons, led to a row of brown bathing cabins. Two very small finger posts, painted white, said Ladies to the right and
Gents to the left.
The eastern sun glinted on quiet, opaque water. At the northern end of the pool was a diving board. All else was green glimmer and fragrance of a thick wood that rose beyond the bathing cabins.
"We needn't hurry," Cy observed. "There's nobody there yet."
But they found somebody there, when twenty minutes later they approached the pool.
The efficient Stuffy had left them cork-soled sandals, with leather covers for the toes and a strap across the instep. Cy wore the black trunks. H.M., covering his unmentionable bathing suit with a white beach robe, now resembled one of the more evil-minded Roman Emperors. Leaving the house by a screened sun porch, they sauntered towards the pool and its long western side.
"Hello, there!" called Jean's voice.
The voices of Davis and Betterton added their greetings.