[CHAPTER XIII]
HARRY ASKS A QUESTION
Harry was leaving next morning with the two women, being unable to induce Lady Oxted to stop another day, and in consequence he sat up late that night after they had gone to bed, looking over the details of the expense of putting in the electric light. The cheapest plan, it appeared, would be to utilize the power supplied by the fall of water from the lake, for this would save the cost of engines to drive the dynamos. In this case it would be necessary to build the house for them over the sluice; but this, so wrote the engineer, would not interfere with the landscape, for the roof would only just be seen above the belt of trees. Or, if Lord Vail did not mind a little extra expense, a tasteful erection might be made, which, instead of diminishing, would positively add to the beauty of the view from the house. Then followed a horrific sketch of Gothic style.
Harry's thoughts were disposed to go wandering that night, and he gave but a veiled and fugitive attention to the figures. The lake suggested other things to him brighter than all the thirty-two-power lamps of this electric light. The latter, it appeared, could be in the house by September, but the other was in the house now. In any case there should be no horrors, ornamental or otherwise, over the sluice; and he turned to the second estimate, which included engines, with a great determination to think of nothing else.
The scene of this distracted vigil was his uncle's sitting room, where all the papers were to hand. Mr. Francis had sat up with him for half an hour or so, but Harry had then persuaded him to go to bed, for all the evening he had appeared somewhat tired and worried. Then from the next door there came, for some half hour, the faint sounds of brushings and splashings, that private orchestra of bedtime, and after that the house was still.
Harry settled down again to his work, and before long his mind was made up. He would have, he saw, to screw and pinch a little, but on no account should anything, Gothic or not, spoil the lower end of the lake; then pouring himself out some whisky and soda, he took a last cigarette.
The table where he worked was fully occupied, but orderly. A row of reference books—Bradshaw, The Peerage, Whitaker's Almanac, and others—stood in a green morocco case to the left of the inkstand; to the right, in a silver frame, a large photograph of himself. Among other books, he was amused to see a Zadkiel's Almanac, and he drew it from its place and turned idly over a leaf or two. There was a cross in red ink opposite the date of January 3d, on which day, so said this irresponsible seer, a discovery of gold would be made. Harry thought vaguely for a moment of South Africa and the Klondike, then suddenly gave a little gasp of surprise. That had been the day on which he had found the Luck.
The coincidence was strange, but stranger was the fact that his uncle, who had so often remonstrated with him on his half-laughing, half-serious notice of the coincidences which had followed its discovery, should have a Zadkiel at all; strangest that he should have noted this date. Then suddenly a wave of superstitious fear came over him, and he shut Zadkiel hastily up, for fear of seeing other dates marked. Two minutes later he was already laughing at himself, though he did not reopen Zadkiel, and as he took his candle to go to bed his eye fell on a red morocco "Where is it?" which lay on the table. He knew that there was some address he wanted to verify, but it was a few minutes before he had turned to G. There was the name "Dr. Godfrey, 32 Wimpole Street," and on each side of it minute inverted commas. He looked at it in some astonishment, for he would have been ready to swear that his uncle had told him 32 Half Moon Street.