The two men stood looking at each other, and their expressions of countenance would have furnished a study.
“Well, Mr Varne?” began Mervyn: “I hope you’ve effected a thoroughly exhaustive and satisfactory investigation.”
“Fairly, thanks,” said the other, pretending to enter into the humour of the thing, while in reality feeling grim and resentful. “But it’s rather cold in there, you know.”
“Yes, I do know. I was admiring your scientific enthusiasm in the cause of ‘old stones,’ as my niece calls them, that induced you to stick it all that time.”
“Induced me? Why I couldn’t get out,” was the short reply.
“No. You can’t open that door from the inside. It’d be the most deadly place to get shut up in if no one knew you were there. Rather.”
There seemed a latent meaning in the words, at least, so Helston Varne found himself reading them.
“Well, you’d better have a whisky and soda now, or at any rate a copious mouthful of three star—that’ll warm you up more,” went on Mervyn in the most matter of fact way, and diving into a sideboard he produced both. This time Varne did not decline. The revivifying warmth, the blessed light of day, were fast counteracting his resentment. Still, not altogether, for he said in a half amazed, half joking manner:
“I suppose I must congratulate you on carrying out a practical joke thoroughly when you do undertake one, Mr Mervyn. But at the same time it might prove dangerous with some people. According to British law turning a key on an independent fellow-subject is a ground for action for false imprisonment.”
“Law—did you say?” returned Mervyn, in a gouty, gusty sort of way. “Why, I was administering law what time you were being smacked in the nursery—or ought to have been.”