The Earl left his room some time after noon. His toilet had occupied him for longer than was usual, since he was obliged to move his left arm with caution, and refused to abate one jot of his meticulous neatness. He bore with patience such suggestions from Turvey as that he should make his appearance in his dressing-gown; but when the valet went so far as to beg him to leave the arrangement of his cravat in his hands, patience failed, and he spoke softly but so very much to the point that it needed only a look from him, some minutes later, to dissuade Turvey from offering to escort him to whichever of the saloons he chose to sit in.
Leaving his henchman the personification of cold disapproval, he strolled down the gallery in the direction of the Grand Stairway. As he approached the door which led to the stair up which Martin had told him he had come, on the night of the storm, it opened, and a portly man, dressed in an ill-fitting suit of black clothes, peeped into the gallery. When he saw the Earl, he gave a start, and seemed to be in two minds whether to advance or to withdraw. The Earl, pausing, raised his quizzing-glass to his eye, and surveyed him with interest.
The dress, if not the bearing, of the stranger proclaimed his avocation, but it scarcely needed this to inform the Earl that he was confronting his brother’s new valet. Ulverston’s description rose forcibly to his mind. Mr. Leek’s homely features were certainly unprepossessing, for besides being muffin-faced, he had small, quick-glancing eyes, and a nose which, having at some time in its owner’s career been broken, was now far from straight. Close-cropped, grizzled hair, and a gap in his upper jaw occasioned by the loss of two teeth added little to his charm, and his smile, which, while it stretched his mouth left his eyes mirthless, did nothing to improve his countenance.
“Ah!” said the Earl. “You, I fancy, must be Mr. Martin’s new man!”
“Valet to the Honourable Martin,” said Mr. Leek, on a reproving note. “Tempor’y! Being, as you may say, retired!” He added, as one tardily recollecting his instructions: “Me lord!”
“I see you know me.”
“Properly speaking,” replied Mr. Leek, “no! But the other flash — the other gentlemen being accounted for, which is the aforesaid Honourable Mr. Frant, and me Lord Ulverston, I reaches by deduction the concloosion that your lordship is this Earl.”
“Which Earl?” Gervase enquired.
“The one as owns this ken,” replied Mr. Leek, with a comprehensive gesture.
“I do own it, and as its owner I am a trifle curious to know what precise circumstance could take my brother’s valet to a stair that leads only to some storerooms, and to the Fountain Court?”