The Keeper of the Door Part 30

"You mean he will--someday--be like you?" she said.

He smiled at that. "He will be a greater man than I am," he said.

"An interesting collection!" commented Nick. "Heroes past, present, and to come! You will pardon me for putting myself first. My little halo went out long ago."

"Nick! How absurd you are!"

"My dear, it's my _role_ to be absurd. I am the clown in every tragedy I come across--the comic relief man--the buffoon in every side-show. Hence my Frontier laurels, because I kept on dancing when everyone else was dead. The world likes dancers--virtuous or otherwise." Nick broke off with his elastic grimace. "If I go on, you'll think I'm trying to be clever. Sir Kersley, come and have a drink!"

"I'm bringing drinks," said Max's voice from the hall. "I say, Ratcliffe,"--he entered with the words--"do go and dislodge that leech Goring. He's in the garden with Miss Campion. Tell him I don't want to see either him or his beastly thumb for a week. I'll call in next Sunday, if I've nothing better to do. Say I'm engaged if he asks for me now."

"I'll say you're dead if you like," said Nick cheerily. "Shall I say you're dead too, Olga?"

"Say she's engaged also," said Max.

Olga glanced up sharply, but he was not looking at her. He was occupied in pouring out a drink for his friend, which he brought to him almost immediately.

"That's how you like it measured to a drop. Sorry there's no ice to be had. It doesn't grow in these parts."

"I'd have got out the best gla.s.s if I'd known," murmured Olga regretfully.

Max threw up his head and laughed. "What a good thing I didn't tell her, eh, Kersley?" He leaned a careless hand on Sir Kersley's shoulder. "She doesn't know what a taste you have for the simple life."

Olga's eyes opened wide at the familiarity of speech and action. Sir Kersley faintly smiled.

"Since Miss Ratcliffe received me so kindly as a friend of yours," he said, "I hope she will continue to regard me in that light, and dispense with all unnecessary ceremony. Miss Ratcliffe, I drink to our better acquaintance!"

"How nice of you!" said Olga.

"I return thanks on Miss Ratcliffe's behalf," said Max. "How long has the Hunt-Goring monstrosity been here?"

Olga's face clouded. "Oh, ages! Do you think Nick will persuade him to go?"

"He can't stop to lunch if he isn't asked," said Max.

"An unwelcome visitor?" asked Sir Kersley.

"Yes, a neighbour of ours," explained Olga. "He lives about two miles away at a place called The Warren. He is retired from the Army. He shoots and hunts in the winter and loafs all the summer."

"A very horrid man," said Max with a twinkle. "He broke his thumb the other day and we haven't been quit of him since. You see, Miss Ratcliffe has a most beautiful friend staying with her with whom we all fall in love at first sight. Some of us fall out again and some of us don't.

Hunt-Goring--presumably--belongs to the latter category."

"And you?" asked Sir Kersley.

"Oh, I am too busy for frivolities of that sort," said Max. "My mind is entirely occupied with drugs. Ask Miss Ratcliffe if it isn't!"

Olga looked a little scornful. It suddenly seemed to her that Max Wyndham required a snub. She was spared the trouble of administering one, however, by the reappearance of the housemaid.

She rose. "Do you want me, Ellen?"

"Oh, no, miss. It's all right," was Ellen's breezy reply. "I only just come to say as it was Dr. Wyndham as brought in them raspberries--early this morning."

Ellen disappeared as Max popped the cork of a soda-water bottle with unexpected violence. He clapped his hand over the top and carried it bubbling to the window.

"Awfully sorry," he said. "The beastly stuff is so up this weather."

Olga followed him with his gla.s.s. "Thank you for rescuing my raspberries," she said.

Max rubbed himself down with a handkerchief and took the gla.s.s from her.

He was somewhat red in the face. He looked at her with a queer smile.

"Confound that girl!" he said.

"Have you discovered any specially beneficial properties In raspberries?" asked Sir Kersley in the tone of one seeking information.

"Not yet. I'm experimenting," said Max.

And Olga laughed, though she could scarcely have said why.

"There goes Nick, escorting the undesirable," observed Max, a moment later. "I begin to think there really must be a spark of genius in that little uncle of yours. Hunt-Goring looks as if he had been kicked, while the swagger of Five Foot Nothing defies description. Ah! And here comes Miss Campion! She looks as if--" He broke off short.

Olga bent forward sharply to catch a glimpse of her friend, and then as swiftly checked herself and remembered her guest. She moved sedately back into the room, only to discover that he also had risen, to look out of the window over Max's shoulder.

Instinctively she glanced at him. His deep-set eyes were fixed intently as if held by a vision. But his face was drawn in painful lines. She had a curious feeling of foreboding as she watched him. There was something fateful in his look. It pa.s.sed in a moment. Almost before she knew it, he had turned back to her and was courteously conversing.

She gave him her attention with difficulty. Her ears were strained to catch the sound of Violet's approach. She was possessed by a ridiculous longing to rush out to her, to keep her from entering this man's presence, to warn her--to warn her--Of what? She had not the faintest idea.

By a great effort of will, she controlled herself, but the impulse yet remained--a striving, clamouring force, impotent but insistent.

There came the low, sweet notes of Violet's voice. She was singing a Spanish love-song.

Sir Kersley Whitton fell silent. He looked at the door. Max wheeled from the window. Olga waited tensely for the coming of her friend.

The door swung back and she entered. With her careless Southern grace she sauntered in upon them.

"Good Heavens!" she said, breaking off in the middle of her song. "Is it a party of mutes?"

Olga hastily and with evident constraint introduced the visitor, at sound of whose name Violet opened her beautiful eyes to their widest extent.

"How do you do? I had no idea a lion was expected. Why wasn't I told?"

"He is not one of the roaring kind," said Max.

Violet was looking with frank curiosity into Sir Kersley's face. "I'm sure I've met you somewhere," she said. "I wonder where."

He smiled slightly--a smile which to Olga's watching eyes was infinitely sad.

"I don't think you have," he said. "You may have seen my portrait."