"They are stiff, these English! and oh! they have no feeling, no sentiment!"
And a few moments later when Louisa Harris's really fine voice, firm and clear, echoed in the wide reception room, Her Excellency reiterated her impressions:
"These English have no heart! She sings and her lover is suspected of murder! Bah! they have no heart!"
CHAPTER XIV
THE TALE HAD TO BE TOLD
And whilst the morning papers were unfolded by millions of English men and women, and the details of the mysterious crime discussed over eggs and bacon and buttered toast, Philip de Mountford, the newly found heir presumptive to the Earldom of Radclyffe, was lying in the gloomy mortuary chamber of a London police court, whither he had been conveyed in the same cab whose four narrow walls jealously guarded the secret of the tragedy which had been enacted within their precincts.
Lord Radclyffe had been aroused at ten o'clock the previous night by representatives of the police, who came to break the news to him. It was not late, and the old man was not yet in bed. He had opened the front door of his house himself, his servants—he explained curtly—were spending their evening more agreeably elsewhere.
The house—even to the police officers—appeared lonely and gloomy in the extreme, and the figure of the old man, who should have been surrounded by every luxury that rank and wealth can give, looked singularly pathetic as he stood in his own door-way, evidently unprotected and uncared for, and suspiciously demanding what his late visitors' business might be.
Very reluctantly on hearing the latter's status he consented to admit them. He did not at first appear to suspect that anything wrong might have happened, or that anything untoward could occasion this nocturnal visit: in fact, he seemed unconscious of the lateness of the hour.
He walked straight into the library, where he had obviously been sitting, for an arm-chair was drawn to the fire, a reading lamp was lighted on the table, and papers and magazines lay scattered about.