I looked out across the park and a certain feeling of depression stole over me. We were alone in a little sitting room which had been made over to our exclusive use.
"I can't help wishing," I confessed, "that we knew a little more where we stood. We've been working for Mr. Thomson now for the best part of a year, and there isn't one of us three can tell whether we've been helping the greatest crook the world has ever known, or a master detective."
"I'm not sure that I care," Rose said sweetly.
Leonard helped himself to a cigarette.
"When I think of that night at Cromer," he reflected—"you remember how wet it was, how the wind howled, and we hadn't enough fire in our lodgings, or enough money to buy food?—when I think of those days and realise how life has changed since our mysterious god came out of the machine, I feel very much like Rose. I feel like a pagan, Maurice. We're back again in our old lives, wearing the right sort of clothes, eating and drinking like civilised beings, travelling in comfort, and with a bank account growing all the time. It's good enough for me."
"And for me," Rose echoed.
I fell in with their mood. After all, the sun was shining and a long summer's day lay before us.
"Begone, dull care," I invoked, "at any rate until our next letter of instructions arrives. Into flannels, Leonard, and then to the nets. I suppose they'll let me have a knock."
"I shall come and watch," Rose decided graciously.
Our entertainment at Lorringham Castle was in its way princely. We had a suite of rooms to ourselves, and a dining room which we shared with Charles Jacoty, the leader of the Duke's private orchestra, David Faraday, the famous illusionist, a Mrs. Middleham, widow of the Duke's private chaplain, who arranged the dance programmes and painted the menus, and a young man—Gerald Formby—the son of Sir James Formby, the agent to the estate, who presided at the dinner table and from whom we heard most of the gossip of the place. It was on the evening after the cricket match that we received from him the first inkling as to what the nature of our mission might be.