Mr Narth cleared his throat.
“Do you suggest that that reptile was sent to you—maliciously?”
Clifford Lynne turned his amused eyes upon the questioner.
“A live, poisonous snake is not my idea of a birthday present,” he said gently. “And I hate Yellow Heads—they hurt!” He slapped his thigh with sudden energy and laughed. “Why, of course! Yellow snake! Fancy my forgetting that!”
Again his eyes sought the girl’s.
“You’re getting a pretty careless husband…I didn’t get your name… Joan, is it? I thought all the Joans were married, but perhaps I’m thinking of the Dorothys! You’re about twenty-one, aren’t you? All the Joans are about twenty-one, all the Patricias are seventeen, and most of the Mary Anns are drawing their Old Age Pensions.”
“And all the Cliffords are on the stage,” she retorted, and this time he laughed. It was a soft, musical gurgle of sound, so unlike his forbidding appearance that it seemed to be a new and a different man breaking through the outward sham and disguise of him.
“You made that up on the spur of the moment!” he said, lifting an admonitory finger. “But I deserved it.”
He dived into the pockets of his nondescript coat, brought out a large gunmetal watch and consulted it.
“Not going!” he said disgustedly and, shaking, held it to his ear. “What’s the time?”
“Six,” said Mr Narth, recovering his voice.
“I knew it couldn’t be half past twelve,” said the visitor, calmly adjusting the hands. “I’ll be getting back. I’m renting a place in London for the moment, but I’ll be down tomorrow or the day after. Church of England?”
Joan, to whom this question was fired, nodded.
“I’m a bit that way myself,” admitted Mr Lynne, “but with leaning towards incense and good music. But I admire Baptists—how they keep good on varnish and harmoniums beats me! So long, Dorothy!”
“You mean Agnes,” said Joan, and her eyes gleamed again.
She held out a hand and felt her own enfolded in a strong grip. Apparently he deemed no other member of the family worthy of such a salute, and with a bright nod, which embraced them all, he walked briskly to the door and into the hall. Mr Narth thought he had gone, and was about to speak when the bearded man reappeared.
“Anybody know a man called Grahame St Clay?” he asked.
In a flash Mr Narth remembered the conversation of the morning.
“I know a Mr St Clay. I don’t exactly know him, but one of my directors is a friend of his,” he said.
Clifford Lynne’s eyebrows rose.
“Is that so?” he said calmly. “You’ve never met him?”
Mr Narth shook his head.
“You might tell me tomorrow night what you think of him.”
“But I’m not seeing him,” said Mr Narth.
“Oh, yes, you are,” said Clifford softly, and again that hint of mischief shone in his clear blue eyes. “Oh, indeed you are! St Clay! Who canonized Yellow mud?”
In another second he had gone, slamming the front door behind him. He was a man of violent habits, as Mr Narth subsequently insisted.
“Thank God, I’m not marrying him!” said Mabel, and Letty, hardly yet recovered from her swoon, murmured agreement.
Joan said nothing. She was more than a little bewildered, very interested, but not in the slightest degree frightened.
CHAPTER SIX
At the end of the drive, drawn up on the verge by the roadside, was Mr Clifford Lynne’s car. ‘Car’ is perhaps a dignified description of a machine that he had purchased a few days previously for Ł35. He had left the engine running because it was his experience that failure to take this precaution might mean half an hour’s work in starting. With a rattle and a clank, a groaning and a squeaking, he brought the machine to the road, drove noisily for a hundred yards, then turned along a wagon track that ran into the pines.
The end of the path brought him to the grey stone Slaters’ Cottage. Every window was broken; the pathetic little portico which a pretentious owner of the ‘60’s had added sagged dismally in the centre; a dozen slates were missing from the roof—this one-storied cottage was a picture of desolation and neglect.
A group of three men stood before the door, and his arrival had evidently interrupted a unanimous decision, which the first of the men voiced as Clifford sprang from the quivering machine.
“You’ll never be able to do anything with this place, sir,” said the man, evidently, from the pocket-rule that protruded from his hip pocket, engaged in the building trade. “The floors are rotten, the house wants a new roof, and you’ll need a new water and drainage system.”
Without a word Lynne strode past them into the building. It consisted of two rooms, one to the left and one to the right of the passageway he had entered. At the end of the hall was a tiny kitchen with a rusted stove, and from this led a scullery. Looking through the broken windows at the back, he could see a weatherworn shed which in point of repair was the superior of the cottage.
The floorboards creaked and cracked under his weight. In one place they had rotted and a great hole appeared. The ancient paper hung in dismal, colourless shrouds from the walls, and the ceilings were almost indistinguishable under festoons of cobwebs.
He rejoined the group before the door and filled his pipe deliberately from a long canvas sack which he hauled from his pocket.
“Are you a builder or a poet?” he asked the man with the foot-rule.
The builder grinned.
“I’m a pretty good builder,” he said, “but I’m not a magician, and to get this house in order in a week you want three Aladdin’s lamps.”
Clifford put his pipe in his mouth and lit it deliberately.
“Cutting out the possibility of engaging the slave of the lamp, how many men would it require to carry out the repairs?”
“It isn’t a question of men, it’s a question of money,” said the builder. “I could certainly get everything done in a week, but it would cost you the greater part of a thousand pounds, and the cottage isn’t worth that.”
Clifford sent a cloud of smoke into the air and watched it dissolve.
“Put on a gang of two hundred men,” he said; “work them in eight-hour shifts day and night. Have them started this evening tearing up the floors. Get all the trolleys you need, all the material you need, and have it specially delivered. I want oak floors, a bathroom, electric light laid on, a hot-water system, steel shutters to the windows, this wagon-track made into a good road, a swimming-pool behind the house, and that’s about all, I think.”
“In seven days?” gasped the builder.
“In six preferably,” said Lynne. “You can either take it on or I’ll find a man who will do it.”
“But, Mr Lynne, for the money it will cost you you could get one of the best houses in Sunningdale–-“
“This is my ideal home,” said Clifford Lynne, “and it’s got to be snakeproof!”
He looked round his little estate. The fence that marked the boundaries of the grounds was invisible behind the screen of the trees.
“All these firs had better be cut down,” he said. “I want a clear line of fire.”
“Line of what?” almost squeaked the builder.
“And the steel shutters must have loopholes—I forgot to tell you that. Give me that book.”
He almost snatched the builder’s notebook from his hand and began to sketch.
“That shape, and those dimensions,” he said, handing the book back. “Are you taking on this job?”