"A near thing," said Harry. "Let us go back. Geoff, if you had lit that match, we should almost certainly have been discovered."
Mr. Francis left early the next morning for London, to see two or three little flats, one of which he thought might perhaps be compassable by the modest sum he was prepared to give for a pied-à-terre in town. None of them were in very fashionable districts; the one which seemed to him most promising was in Wigmore Street, and this held forth the additional advantage of being near Cavendish Square. Harry had telegraphed to the care-taker there to get a couple of rooms ready for his uncle, and without his knowledge (for he would certainly have deprecated such a step) he had sent up from Vail a kitchen maid, who was also a very decent cook, in order to make him more comfortable. Mr. Francis had breakfasted, and the trap to take him to the station was already at the door when the two young men came down, and he hailed them genially from the threshold as his luggage was put up.
"Good-morning, dear boys!" he cried. "You will have a lovely day for your shoot. It is perfect after yesterday's storm. Yes, I am just off, I am sorry to say. I shall stop at least a week in town, I expect, Harry; but I will let you know when I am thinking of coming back."
Harry went out just as his uncle climbed nimbly up into the dogcart; Geoffrey had stayed in the hall, and was glancing at the paper.
"Uncle Francis," he said, "do take that more expensive flat in De Vere Gardens, if you find it suits you better. Don't consider the extra expense at all; I can manage that for you perfectly."
"You are too generous to me, dear Harry," said the other, stretching down and grasping his hand. "But no, dear boy, I could not think of it. I shall be immensely comfortable in that one in Wigmore Street. But thank you, thank you.—Luggage all in? Drive on, Jim," he said abruptly.
Harry turned indoors and went across the hall to the dining room. But Mr. Francis, after having driven not more than a couple of hundred yards, stopped the cart, and descending, began to walk toward the house. Halfway there he stopped, and stood for a moment lost in thought; then, with an air of a taken decision, went on more quickly. On the threshold again he stopped, biting his lip, and frowning heavily.
At that moment Geoffrey got up from his paper, and crossing the door into the entrance hall, on his way to join Harry in the dining room, saw him through the glass door, standing like this, and went to see why he had come back. And the face that met him was the face of old Francis—a wicked, malignant mask, even as Harry had seen it that day when the sun shone brightly on the picture. But next moment it changed and melted.
"I thought you had gone," said Geoffrey. "Have you forgotten something?"
"Yes, my flute," said Mr. Francis, not looking at him; and picking it up from where it lay on the piano, he went out again, and walked quickly up the drive to where the dogcart was waiting.