"It's a bitter cold night," my brother put in, "supposing you take my coat and this shooting hat. It'll keep you as warm as toast."
Of course Dickson max. would have scorned the idea of an overcoat under ordinary circumstances, though Bernard didn't know that. But the opportunity of wearing the ulster of a Wing-Commander of Submarines, who had been wounded off Heligoland, was too much for the youthful mind. He flushed with pleasure, and I won't swear that, as he went out into the passage, he didn't salute.
I went downstairs with him, helped him on with the big coat—he was the same height as Bernard and much the same figure—and pressed the heather-mixture shooting hat on his head.
"Now scoot as hard as you can go," I told him, opening the door, and he was gone like a flash into the dark night.
When I got back there was a curious silence. Somehow or other we none of us seemed to know what to say. I can't account for it, but there it was. It was then that my brother came in and I found a side of him I had only suspected but never seen before.
Leaning forward in his chair, he began to talk very quietly, but with great earnestness. I saw what he was up to. He was leading the conversation very near home indeed. It was astonishing how he dominated us all, how we hung on his words and how the sense of sinister surroundings grew and grew as he spoke.
It was the girls who responded. The skill with which he introduced the subject was enormous, but they were marvellously "quick in the uptake." It was Marjorie who leant forward, her great eyes flashing and her lips compressed to a thin line of scarlet.
"Commander Carey," she said, "don't think that I or my sister are entirely ignorant that there is something very wrong about this place. You have turned our thoughts into a new channel."
She was wearing a blouse with loose sleeves, ending in some filmy lace. Suddenly, with her right hand, she pulled up the left-arm sleeve. There were three dark purple marks upon her white arm.
"That was this morning," she said, nodding once or twice. "And now speak out, if you have anything to tell us, about the man who killed my mother as surely as if he did it with a gun, and who has done his best to ruin the lives of my sister and myself. Speak without fear!"