"This," he said, "will make everything all right. And I'll call again in a couple of hours' time. You won't forget the cook?"
"No, I won't forget the cook."
When the doctor had taken his leave, Luke stood for a moment quietly in the library: he folded up the medical certificate which he had received at the hands of Doctor Newington, and carefully put it away in his pocket-book.
"You won't forget the cook?"
I don't think that ever in his life before had Luke realized the trivialities of life as he did at this moment. Remember that he was quite man of the world enough, quite sufficiently sensible and shrewd and English, to have noticed that the degree of familiarity in the doctor's manner had passed the borderland of what was due to himself; the tone of contemptuous indifference savoured of impertinence. And there was something more than that.
Last night when Luke wandered up and down outside the brilliantly lighted windows of the Danish Legation, trying to catch a few muffled sounds of the voice he so passionately loved to hear, he heard the first rumours that an awful crime had been committed which, for good or ill, would have such far-reaching bearings on his own future; but he had also caught many hints, vague suggestions full of hidden allusions, of which the burden was: "Seek whom the crime benefits."
Luke de Mountford was no fool. Men of his stamp—we are accustomed to call them commonplace—take a very straight outlook on life. They are not hampered by the psychological problems which affect the moral balance of a certain class of people of to-day; they have no sexual problems to solve. Theirs is a steady, wholesome, and clean life, and the mirrors of nature have not been blurred by the breath of psychologists.
Luke had never troubled his head about his neighbour's wife, about his horse, or his ass, or anything that is his; therefore his vision about the neighbour himself had remained acute.
Although I must admit that at this stage the thought that he might actually be accused of a low and sordid crime never seriously entered his head, he nevertheless felt that suspicion hovered round him, that some people at any rate held it possible that since he would benefit by the crime, he might quite well have contemplated it.
The man Travers thought so certainly; the doctor did not deem it impossible—and, of course, there would be others.