Mr. Marx's Secret

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

I was about to penetrate into a mystery which had been the curiosity of my boyhood; I was to become one of those favoured few who had been permitted to pass within the portals of Ravenor Castle; and, more than that, I was about to visit there as the guest of a man whose marvellous reputation, personality, and career had kindled within me an almost passionate reverence—a man who had long been the object of my devoted, although boyish and unreasonable, hero-worship. Yet, though it would seem that I had everything to gain and nothing to fear or lose from the coming interview, no sooner had I arrived within sight of my destination than my spirits sank to zero.

A woman would have called it a presentiment and have accepted it with mute despair. To me it seemed only an unreasonable reaction from my previous state of suppressed excitement—a feeling to be crushed at any cost, lest I should stand, with gloomy, unthankful face, before the man in whose power it lay to raise me from my present distasteful position and prospects. So I threw my head back and quickened my steps, keeping resolutely before me in my thoughts all that I had ventured to hope from my forthcoming interview; and by the time I stood before the great iron gates and stretched out my hand to ring the bell, the depression had almost passed away, and the eagerness which I felt was, no doubt, fully reflected m my countenance.

I had no need to ring. My last quick footstep had fallen upon a harder substance than the gravel upon which I had been walking, and the contact of my feet with it made my presence known in a manner which surprised me not a little. There was a shrill ringing from the lodge door on my right, and almost simultaneously it opened and a servant came out in the dark Ravenor livery.

“Will you be so good, sir, as to step off the planking?” he said.

I moved a yard or two backwards, and the bell—it was an electric bell, of course—instantly ceased. It was my first experience of any such means of communication, and I stood for a moment looking down in some bewilderment.

“Your name and business, sir?” the man inquired respectfully. “Did you wish to see Mr. Clemson?” Mr. Clemson was the steward.

“My name is Morton, and my business is with Mr. Ravenor,” I answered. “I want to see him.”

“I am afraid that Mr. Ravenor will not be able to see you, sir,” he said. “Have you an appointment?”

“Yes; for five o’clock,” I answered. And the words had scarcely left my lips before the first stroke of the hour boomed out from the great Castle clock. Perhaps, more than anything else could have done, that sound brought home to me the realisation of where I was. Hour after hour, all through my life, from the depths of Rothland Wood, from the home meadows, or in my long rambles over the far-away Barnwood Hills, I had heard those deep, throbbing chimes; sometimes faint and low, when the wind bore the sound away from me, sometimes harsh and piercing in the storm, and often as dear and distinct as though only a sheet of water stretched between us. And now I stood almost within a stone’s throw of them, and marvelled no longer that the deep, resounding notes should travel so far over hill and moor that I had never yet been able to wander out of hearing of them.

The man accepted my explanation after a moment’s hesitation, and, standing aside from the doorway out of which he had issued, motioned me to enter. I did so and received a fresh surprise. Instead of finding myself in the home of one of the servants of the estate, which would have seemed the natural thing, I found myself in a most luxuriously furnished waiting-room, hung with mirrors and oak-framed paintings upon a dark panelled wall. My feet sank into a thick carpet, and I subsided, a little dazed, into a low, crimson velvet chair, and found beside me a table covered with magazines.