“Cyril,” said Dick Westwood, rising with an impatient jesture, “we'll have no more of this. I won't allow you to talk any longer in this strain. Shall we finish our cigars in the garden?”
“All right,” said Cyril, rising. But before they had taken a step toward the open French window, there seemed to arise from the earth the figure of a man, and he stood in the window space looking eagerly at each of them in turn.
CHAPTER V.
The stranger stood with his back to whatever light there was remaining in the sky, but Dick Westwood and his guest could see what manner of man he was. He wore a short beard and moustache. His clothes were shabby, and so was his soft hat. He might have been a foreman of mechanics just left off work.
Westwood stepped to the wall and switched on a lamp. Then he scrutinised the stranger closely. The man had entered the room through the French window.
“Who are you, and what do you want, my good fellow?” said Westwood. “It is customary for visitors to pull the bell at the hall door.”
“I pulled the bell. They told me you were at dinner and could not be disturbed, sir,” replied the man.
No one who heard him speak could think of him as an ordinary mechanics' foreman. He spoke like a person of some culture.