“Yes,” said Dick, “he has good nerves.”
Cyril noticed that he declined to accept the past tense in regard to Claude.
“Do you mind testing mine by playing a game of billiards?” asked the younger man.
“I should like a game above all things—but only one. I must be early at the bank in the morning, if only to receive our friend Standish's apology. Come along.”
They went off together to the billiard-room, which was built out at the back of the dining-room; and they had their game, Finishing with the scores so close together that Westwood, who, when Cyril was ninety-seven and he only eighty, ran out with a break of twenty, declared that he had felt more excited by the game than he had at any time of the day—and he confessed that he had found it a rather exciting day on the whole.
It was past eleven when Cyril set out for home, and the night being one of starlight and sweet perfumes, Dick said he would stroll part of the way with him and finish his cigar. They went along together through the shrubbery and across one of the little subsidiary tracks that led from the broad avenue to a small door made in the park wall, half a mile nearer The Knoll than the ordinary entrance gates. Cyril unlocked the door, for the year before Dick had given him a private key for himself and Agnes in order that they might be saved the walk round to the entrance gates when they were visiting the Court. For a few minutes the two men stood chatting on the road, before they said goodnight, and while the one went on in the direction of The Knoll, the other returned to the park, pulling-to the door, which had a spring lock.
The night was wonderfully still. The barking of a dog at King's Elms Farm, nearly a mile away, was heard quite clearly by Richard Westwood, and now and again came the sharp sound of a shot from the warren on Sir Percival Hope's estate, suggesting that a party were shooting rabbits in the most sportsmanlike way, the chances being, on such a night, largely in favour of the rabbits. After every shot one of the peacocks that paraded the grassy terraces of the Court by day, and roosted in the trees by night, sent out a protesting shriek.
All the nocturnal creatures of the woodland were awake, Dick knew. As he paused for a few moments on the track he could hear the stealthy movement of a rat or a weazel among the undergrowth, the flicker of the wings of a bat across the starlight, the rustle of a blackbird among the thick foliage. He had always liked to walk about the park at night, observing and listening, and the result was that none of his gamekeepers had anything like the knowledge which he possessed of the woodland and its inhabitants.
When he reached the house and had let himself in with his latchkey, he went to the drawing-room where he had sat with Cyril after dinner. He threw himself back in his easy-chair, and he seemed to hear once again the voice of Cyril asking him that question:
“Why shouldn't you marry Agnes?”