"By the way, Mr. Drake. Have you got the time?" '
"It's getting on towards five."
"Ah!" Masters shook his head regretfully. "Pity! Bit too early to wake up Dr. Laurier. I wanted to know whether that blood on the dagger is human blood."
"What blood?" cried Jenny.
But Masters, at the deliberate walk he had never lost since he was a policeman on a beat, had disappeared into the mist Jenny's eyes asked Martin the same question.
"It's a joke," he growled. Like other things, he had forced the matter of that dagger out of his consciousness; shut the lid on it. "Just some horseplay at the prison. That fellow," he snarled, "was only trying to scare you when he didn't know a thing. Let's forget it"
They climbed the fence, navigated several ditches, and walked for some time in silence when his words seemed to ring with vibrations in Jenny's voice.
"You're quite right" she said. "Let's forget it! Today is— Sunday, isn't it? Let's forget it! Let's enjoy ourselves!"
"And tomorrow," said Martin, "you go to London with me. You must have some friends who aren't under the eye and grip of Grandma, and you can stay with them. We can get a special license soon, if you don't mind being married in a registry office. Will you do that?"
"Of course," Jenny said simply "Anywhere, any time. I did think it would be better to get Grandmother's approval, because she says she's beginning to like you; but—"
Martin stopped short
"Listen, Jenny angel." He touched her moist cheek, and looked down at the eager blue eyes. "It's a good thing I'm reasonably honest. Anybody you like seems able to deceive you. I can no more imagine your 'good grandmother’ giving us her approval than I can imagine her canoodling with Sir Henry Merrivale."
He felt a compression in the chest; such an immensity of tenderness that he could not have expressed it.
"It'll be all right, you know," he said. "You needn't worry. I’m not exactly broke, and… damn it, come on! We're nearly home!"
For the white, square solidness of Fleet House loomed up ahead in a mist-rift, seen partly from the north side and partly from the back. They were nearly on the edge of a flower garden, whose paths they managed with care, until they emerged across a clipped lawn at the back of the house. To Martin Drake, this morning, Fleet House had no forbidding quality at all.
"I suppose," Jenny said, in a voice which asked to have the supposition denied, "you'll want to sleep for hours and hours?"
"Sleep? Sleep!" He chortled from deep springs of happiness. "No, Jenny. What I want is a bath, a shave, and a change. But first I want quantities of very black, very strong tea."
"I'll make it for you."
Martin surveyed the back of the house. "But how do we get in?"
"Darling, nobody ever locks doors hereabouts. Anyone can walk in anywhere."
"But we'll wake the whole house up, won't we?"
"Wait; I've got it!" breathed Jenny. She pointed to a middle door hardly discernible through mist "I’ll go into the kitchen and make tea; Aunt Cicely won't mind. You go on up to the roof."
The roof?"
"It will be above the mist and clear air. We can do it without disturbing anybody, and we'll have the whole place to ourselves. I'll be up as soon as the kettle boils."
"That," declared Martin, "is one of the better ideas. But can't I help you?"
"Please let me do it myself," begged Jenny. Her look was irresistible… "If you knew how much I want to… to show … Please let me do it myself, and bring it up to you!"
"Yours to command, Jenny." It pleased him immensely. "Can I get up to the roof from here?"
Jenny indicated a small door at the north-west corner.
"The stairs," she said, "are enclosed. It's a kind of thin box. Do be careful, because they're nearly as steep as a carpeted ladder."
"I know, I’ve gone op there from another floor." He looked at the kitchen, and then at Jenny. 'Ten minutes?" "Less, if I can make it"
With even more acute exhilaration, Martin sauntered through mist-wreaths towards the door. It was set up well above ground-height on five concrete steps. The stairs, if he remembered correctly, were very narrow; they turned back the other way at each landing, which had a window and a door. Though half expecting to find the door bolted, he discovered it was open. He had shut himself into the cramped stair-well, whose dingy carpet showed holes and whose window-light filtered through mist, when another door at his right hand opened.
Framed in the doorway, against the dim-lit background of the dining-room, stood Dr. Hugh Laurier.
From his hard, white collar to his polished shoes, from the precision of the dark necktie to the pressing of the dark blue suit Dr. Laurier was so immaculately groomed that Martin felt like a tramp dragged out of an areaway. On Dr. Laurier there might never have been a speck of dust in his life.
"Capta — I beg your pardon: Mr. Drake."
His voice had the pleasant engaging professional level.
"Ordinarily," Dr. Laurier uttered a short laugh, "it would be hard to explain my presence at this hour. It would, indeed. But I was like the boy with the serial story. After going home, I returned here. I had to know what happened."
"You'll have to ask Stannard," replied Martin, feeling at his unshaven chin. "He'll be along in a moment.’'
"Mr. Stannard didn't come back with you?"
"No."
"Isn't that rather odd?"
"Nothing odd about it I didn't feel like having company, that's all."
Martin started to take a step up, but the doctor detained him.
"Mr. Drake. One other matter. I could not—" Dr. Laurier emphasized the words more than italics can convey—"speak of this in the presence of others. I want to say a word or two; then ask you not to remember it"
"Of course."
Dr. Laurier peered behind him. In the dining-room, the tall curtains of heavy red velvet were still drawn closely. The light of a single small bulb in a wall lamp touched his grey hair, his pince-nez. Martin remembered him silhouetted against a different radiance.v
"Mr. Drake. My slip with the rapier was honestly an accident."
"But, man! I never thought it was anything else!" The other smiled whimsically.
"So many times," he said, "I have thrown myself under my opponent's guard. Or dropped sideways, on one knee, to cut with the double-edged blade!"
If this referred to the rules of fencing, it was weird talk. Dr. Laurier saw Martin's expression.
"In imagination," he explained dryly. "Are you well read in the history of small-arms?"
"I'm afraid not."
"There was the 'Fifty-fifty,' where you threw yourself in to catch his unedged blade in your left hand and kill him with the right. If your left hand in the least slipped, you were a dead man. There was the Spanish 'Low-High' with double-edgers: you parried a cut low to the right; you dropped on one knee to cut across the back of the knees above the ankles; then rose and thrust him through the side. There was the 'Vanity'; a very narrow mirror set into the blade along its length. Only a thread of it, unperceived till play began; but it blinded him with its flash.
"There was the botte de Jesuite, mentioned in Esmond. It really existed, and was a perfectly fair device of swordsmanship, unlike the others; they were outlawed. — But I bore you," Dr. Laurier added evenly.
"Not a bit. But some other time…"
"I speak," said the doctor, "of what interests me privately. It is the hobby of a lonely man. Do you understand?"
"I do."
"Nor am I a good swordsman as yet. Who can be, with so little opportunity to practice? My father fought two duels."
Martin, who had been about to get away as politely as possible, felt the tangle of ugly incidents catch him again like a net of hooks.