“Weren't we going to see the picture-gallery?” he inquired. “Isn't it getting late? I should like to see the portraits.”
“No hurry,” answered T. Tembarom. “I was just waiting till you were ready. But we'll go right away, if you like.”
They went without further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt that perhaps the eyes of an ancient darkling portrait or so looked down at the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather slouching along by the soldierly, almost romantic figure which, in a measure, suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same oaken floor, wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot and sword. There was a far cry between the two, but they walked closely in friendly union. When they entered the picture-gallery Strangeways paused a moment again, and stood peering down its length.
“It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?” he said.
“I told Pearson to leave it dim,” Tembarom answered. “I wanted it just that way at first.”
He tried—and succeeded tolerably well—to say it casually, as he led the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme over for nothing. As his grace had said, they had “worked the thing up.” As they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen.
“We'll turn up the lights after a while,” T. Tembarom explained, still casually. “There's a picture here I think a good deal of. I've stood and looked at it pretty often. It reminded me of some one the first day I set eyes on it; but it was quite a time before I made up my mind who it was. It used to drive me half dotty trying to think it out.”
“Which one was it?” asked Strangeways.
“We're coming to it. I want to see if it reminds you of any one. And I want you to see it sudden.” “It's got to be sudden,” he had said to the duke. “If it's going to pan out, I believe it's got to be sudden.” “That's why I had the rest of 'em left dim. I told Pearson to leave a lamp I could turn up quick,” he said to Strangeways.
The lamp was on a table near by and was shaded by a screen. He took it from the shadow and lifted it suddenly, so that its full gleam fell upon the portrait of the handsome youth with the lace collar and the dark, drooping eyes. It was done in a second, with a dramatically unexpected swiftness. His heart jumped up and down.