As evidently she had hired it in some distant town and she had not as yet finished with it, because she gave the man some directions and money, and from the profound respect which the chauffeur showed, it was clear that that money was merely a tip.
Timothy stood where he could clearly be seen, but her back was toward him all the time and she did not so much as glance in his direction when she passed through the gate and up the garden path.
It was curious, thought Timothy, that she did not take the car up the drive to the house. More curious was it that she should, at this late hour of the evening, have further use for it.
He returned to his room, full of theories, the majority of which were wholly wild and improbable. He lay on his bed, indulging in those dreams which made up the happiest part of his life. Of late he had taken a new and a more radiant pattern to the web of his fancy and——
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” he said in disgust, rolling over and sitting up with a yawn.
He heard the feet of the boarders on the gravel path outside, and once he heard a girl say evidently to a visitor:
“Do you see that funny room! That is Mr. Anderson’s.”
There was still an hour or so to be passed, and he joined the party in the parlour so restless and distrait as to attract attention and a little mild raillery from his fellow guests. He went back to his room, turned on the light and pulled a trunk from under the bed.
Somehow his mind had been running all day upon that erring cousin whose name he bore and whose disappearance from public life was such a mystery. Possibly it was Sir John’s words which had brought Alfred Cartwright to his mind. His mother had left him a number of family documents, which, with the indolence of youth, he had never examined very closely. He had the impression that they consisted in the main of receipts, old diplomas of his father’s (who was an engineer) and sundry other family documents which were not calculated to excite the curiosity of the adventurous youth.
He took out the two big envelopes in which these papers were kept and turned them on to the bed, examining them one by one. Why his cousin should be in his mind, why he should have taken this action at that particular moment, the psychologist and the psychical expert alone can explain. They may produce in explanation such esoteric phenomena as auras, influences, and telepathies, and perhaps they are right.