In a few minutes we heard his step returning.
‘Lady Brotherton has no particular objection to giving up the room you want,’ he said. ‘Will you see Mrs Wilson, Clara, and arrange with her for your accommodation?’
‘With pleasure. I don’t mind where I’m put—unless it be in Lord Edward’s room—where the ghost is.’
‘You mean the one next to ours? There is no ghost there, I assure you,’ said Sir Giles, laughing, as he again left the room with short, heavy steps. ‘Manage it all to your own mind, Mr Cumbermede. I shall be satisfied,’ he called back as he went.
‘Until further notice,’ I said, with grandiloquence, ‘I request that no one may come into this room. If you are kind enough to assort the books we put up yesterday, oblige me by going through the armoury. I must find Mrs Wilson.’
‘I will go with you,’ said Clara. ‘I wonder where the old thing will want to put me. I’m not going where I don’t like, I can tell her,’ she added, following me down the stair and across the hall and the court.
We found the housekeeper in her room. I accosted her in a friendly way. She made but a bare response.
‘Would you kindly show me where I slept that night I lost my sword, Mrs Wilson?’ I said.
‘I know nothing about your sword, Mr Cumbermede,’ she answered, shaking her head and pursing up her mouth.
‘I don’t ask you anything about it, Mrs Wilson; I only ask you where I slept the night I lost it.’