CHAPTER XIII
MR. AND MRS. ATKINS AT HOME
An urgent case necessitated my leaving Beverley at such an early hour that the city was still half asleep when I reached it. After driving from florist to florist in search of an early riser amongst them, I at last found one. I selected the choicest of his flowers, and ordered them to be sent to Miss Derwent by special messenger, hoping they would arrive in time to greet her on her awakening, and cheerfully paid the price demanded for them.
On reaching my office I was surprised to find a note from the irrepressible Atkins. You may remember, patient reader, that I had promised to dine with him on the previous evening. When I found that it would be impossible for me to do so, I sent word that I regretted that I could not keep my engagement with him. I naturally thought that that ended the matter. Not at all! Here was an invitation even more urgent than the last—an invitation for that very day, too. Unless I wished to be positively rude and to hurt the feelings of these good people, I must accept. There was no way out of it. So I scribbled a few lines to that effect.
I confess that when I rang the Atkins’s bell that evening I did so with considerable trepidation, for I was not at all sure how the lady would receive me. You see I had not forgotten the way she flounced out of the room the last and only time I had seen her. And yet I had been quite blameless on that occasion. It was the Coroner’s questions which had annoyed her, not mine. However, I was considerably reassured as to my reception by receiving a smiling welcome from the same pretty maid I had seen the week before. It is a queer fact that we unconsciously measure the amount of regard people have for us by the manners of their servants. That this theory is quite fallacious, I know; but I found it very useful on this occasion, for it gave me the necessary courage to enter the drawing-room with smiling composure.
The room was almost dark, and, coming from the brilliantly-lighted hall, it was some seconds before I could distinguish from its surroundings the small figure of my hostess, silhouetted against the crimson sky. Her shimmering black gown and fluffy hair caught and reflected her red background in such a way that for a moment I fancied I saw her surrounded and bespattered with blood. The effect was so uncanny that it quite startled me, but as she moved forward the illusion vanished, and I was soon shaking a soft, warm hand, which was quite reassuring.
“I just hope you don’t mind the dark,” she exclaimed, leading me to a chair and sinking into one herself, “but somehow the light has hurt my eyes lately, and so I don’t turn it on till it is so dark that I tumble all over the furniture. Mr. Atkins says I’m crazy and ought to buy a pair of blue goggles, and so I would, only they’re so unbecoming.”
“On the contrary,” I assured her, as I let myself cautiously down into one of those uncomfortable gilt abominations known to the trade as a Louis XVI. armchair, “I think this dim light just the thing for a chat; I always become quite confidential if I am caught between daylight and dark. The day reveals too much; it offers no veil for one’s blushes. The darkness, on the other hand, having no visible limits, robs one of that sense of seclusion which alone provokes confidences. But the twilight, the tactful twilight, is so discreet that it lures one on to open one’s heart. Luckily, no designing person has yet found out how weak I am at this hour, or else I should have no secrets left.”
“Oh, go along,” she giggled; “I guess you’re not the kind to say more than you mean to.”
“I assure you I am—” but here I was interrupted by my host, who called out from the threshold: