No lights showed at the front. The summer dusk lay warm on quiet trees.
He wondered how Frank Sharpless was getting on, and how love-affairs could so play the devil with a man's mentality. But he had little time to wrestle with this. At the last house in the road — with the Cotswolds looming behind it — he was greeted by Major Adams, who passed him on to the library.
Here he was met by Sir Henry Merrivale with a violent handshake but a glare of such active malignancy that Courtney hurriedly thought back over recent events, wondering what the man could have heard against him. It presently struck him, however that this must be part of H.M.'s normal social manner; for he could tell that his host was trying to be affable. At all events, H.M.. settled down at the desk, assumed his heroic pose, and indicated that he was ready to begin.
"Yes, sir?"
H.M. cleared his throat.
"I was born," he said with suitable portentousness, "on February 6, 1871, at Cranleigh Court, near Great Yewborough, in Sussex. My mother was formerly Miss Agnes Honoria Gayle, daughter of the Rev. and Mrs. William Gayle, of Great Yewborough. My father— notwithstanding the slanderous rumors circulated at the time — was Henry St. John Merrivale, eighth baronet of the name."
Courtney made a slight noise.
"Have you got that down?" inquired H.M., peering over his spectacles.
"Yes, sir. But are you sure that's quite the way you want to begin?"
The corners of H.M.'s mouth drew down.