“I’m afraid I’m rather abrupt, Mr Varne,” he explained. “If so, excuse me. The fact is, I’ve been more than ‘fed-up’ with that particular episode, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, I’m dead sick of the barest references to it. It was fairly unpleasant to me having the poor devil dying in my house, and all the nuisance of inquest and police investigations, and the rest of it—as you can imagine. Now the whole thing’s a thing of the past, and I want to forget all about it.”
“Quite so, Mr Mervyn, quite so. It is I who must apologise.”
“Oh, no need for that. If you’re ready I shall be happy to show you that door.”
“That will be very good of you.”
They went down the path again, Mervyn still contriving that his visitor should lead the way. Halfway down, the latter stopped short.
“Here is another point that hitherto has escaped me,” he said. “That foreground of chimney stack, thrown out by the background of tree-masses, leafless now, but even with a characteristic beauty at that—‘wine-coloured woods’ some one called it—I forget who—now there’s a picture for you, one that a Yeend King for instance, would be at his best with, and still more so when it’s a soaring wall of foliage.”
“No doubt,” agreed Mervyn. And then he felt glad that the stranger had his back turned full towards him, for even he could hardly restrain a sudden, if ever so slight change of colour caused by that which now set all his pulses humming. For the said stranger’s right foot as he stood, was planted, firmly planted, on a stone, a rounded stone half embedded in the earth, and that foot was obviously, though stealthily, trying whether that stone was easily movable, or not movable at all. And with this consciousness a sudden resolve had come upon Mervyn.
“Yes, it’s all you say,” he went on, in an equable tone. “Are you an artist, may I ask, as well as a connoisseur in antiquities?”
“Oh well, only as amateur. I have done a little with the brush—but, only as an amateur.”
They had re-entered the house, chatting lightly, easily. Then the visitor made a set at the door in the corner.