"The snow's covering them," Bennett answered, when he had wasted several matches; "but they look like fresh ones. Big shoes. Shall we — I — '
H. M. lumbered ahead, as quietly as his own squeaky shoes would permit. The causeway was again muffled. in snow, but they need not have used any secrecy. The front door of the pavilion was opened just as they reached it.
"I rather imagined," said Jervis Willard's voice, out of the gloom in the doorway, "that I saw someone out there. I must make my deepest apologies if I came down here without permission. But the police had gone, and the door was open."
He stood courteously, his head a little inclined, the glow from the drawing-room shining down one side of his handsome face where none of the wrinkles showed now. The light brought out rich hues and shadows; a brocade curtain behind his stiff black clothes, a shadow-trick whereby he seemed to be wearing a black periwig.
"You are Sir Henry Merrivale," he stated. "I'll go now. I hope I didn't intrude. She is still in the bedroom."
If H. M. caught a curious undercurrent in the man's voice, he paid no attention. He only looked briefly at Willard, and stumped up the steps.
"Point of fact, you're the man I wanted to talk to," he announced, with a sort of grudging absent-mindedness. "Don't go. Come on in here. H'm. Yes. So this is it?" Pushing back the brocade curtain over the door to the drawing-room, he studied the room a moment before he lumbered in. "Bahl" he added.
The electric candles were fluttering again over the blackand-white marble floor, the hammered brass vases on cabinets of Japanese lacquers, the whole stiff black and white and dull red color of that fading room. Willard, following Bennett into the room, stood quietly with his back to the fireplace.
H. M. said: "I saw you in `The Bells.' You weren't Irving, but you were devilish good. And your Othello was the best thing you ever did. Mind tellin' me why you're playin' around in polite drawing-room comedy?"
"Thanks, probably," Willard answered, and looked slowly round, "because it's this sort of drawing-room, and had that sort of occupant."