"I do," Geoffrey replied. "I want you to do me a great favor."
"It is granted—granted on the principle that we make the last hours of the condemned criminal as comfortable as possible."
"Then I want you to get up a picnic to-day."
Rupert Ravenspur dropped his glasses on the table. He wondered if this was some new kind of danger, a mysterious form of insanity, brought about by the common enemy.
"I am perfectly serious," Geoffrey said, with a smile. "Not that it is any laughing matter. Dear grandfather, there is a great danger in the house. I don't know what it is, but Uncle Ralph knows, and he has never been wrong yet. It was he who found out all about those dreadful flowers. And he wants the house cleared till dark. Unless we do so, the morning will assuredly see the end of one or more of us."
"Is it a painless death?" the old man asked grimly. "If it is, I prefer to remain here."
"But there is always hope," Geoffrey pleaded. "And you always thinks of us. Won't you do this thing? Won't you say that it is a sudden whim of yours? Mind, everybody is to go, everybody but Uncle Ralph. I shall ride and when I have ridden some distance I shall pretend to have forgotten something. Perhaps you deem me unduly foolish. But I implore you to do this thing."
Rupert Ravenspur hesitated no longer. He always found it hard to resist that young smiling handsome face. Not that he was blind to the folly of the proceedings. On his own initiative he would as soon have danced a hornpipe in the hall.
"I will go and see about it at once," he said.
He had put off his somber air, and assumed a kind of ill-fitting gayety. Gordon Ravenspur and his wife received the suggestion with becoming resignation. To them it was the first signs of a mind breaking down under an intolerable strain. Vera and Marion professed themselves to be delighted.