“I ought to be pole-axed, I ought,” he cried in bitter repentance. “I asked for you, Sir Charles, as I’m a livin’ man, I did, but you weren’t there, and what with bein’ so pleased at gettin’ such odds when I knew Harrison was goin’ to fight, an’ what with the landlord at the George wantin’ me to try his own specials, I let my senses go clean away from me. And now it’s only after the fight is over that I see you, Sir Charles, an’ if you lay that whip over my back, it’s only what I deserve.”
But my uncle was paying no attention whatever to the voluble self-reproaches of the landlord. He had opened the note, and was reading it with a slight raising of the eyebrows, which was almost the very highest note in his limited emotional gamut.
“What make you of this, nephew?” he asked, handing it to me.
This was what I read—
“Sir Charles Tregellis,
“For God’s sake, come at once, when this reaches you, to Cliffe Royal, and tarry as little as possible upon the way. You will see me there, and you will hear much which concerns you deeply. I pray you to come as soon as may be; and until then I remain him whom you knew as
“James Harrison.”
“Well, nephew?” asked my uncle.
“Why, sir, I cannot tell what it may mean.”
“Who gave it to you, sirrah?”
“It was young Jim Harrison himself, sir,” said the landlord, “though indeed I scarce knew him at first, for he looked like his own ghost. He was so eager that it should reach you that he would not leave me until the horse was harnessed and I started upon my way. There was one note for you and one for Sir Lothian Hume, and I wish to God he had chosen a better messenger!”
“This is a mystery indeed,” said my uncle, bending his brows over the note. “What should he be doing at that house of ill-omen? And why does he sign himself ‘him whom you knew as Jim Harrison?’ By what other style should I know him? Harrison, you can throw a light upon this. You, Mrs. Harrison; I see by your face that you understand it.”