A lamp was burning over the door of his rooms, and his name was painted in white letters upon the oak. He went in and turned on the electric light. Then, for a moment, he stood still in the hall, a richly-furnished place surrounded on all sides by doors painted white. His feet made no sound upon the thick Persian carpet, and the whole flat was perfectly still.
He felt uneasy, curiously so, as if some calamity was impending. The exhilaration of his stirring talk with Sir William Gouldesbrough—so recent, so profoundly moving—had now quite departed. His whole consciousness was concentrated upon a little box of metal in the pocket of his overcoat. It seemed alive, he was acutely conscious of its presence, though his fingers were not touching it.
"By Jove!" he said to himself aloud, "the thing's like an electric battery. It seems as if actual currents radiated from it." His own voice sounded odd and unnatural in his ears, and as he hung up his coat and went into the study with the cigarette-case in his hand, he found himself wishing that he had not given his man a holiday—he had allowed him to go to Windsor to spend a night at his mother's house.
A bright fire glowed in the grate of red brick. It shone upon the book-lined walls, playing cheerily upon the crimson, green and gold of the bindings, and turned the great silver inkstand upon the writing-table into a thing of flame.
Everything was cheerful and just as usual.
Megbie put the box down on the table and sank into a huge leather arm-chair with a sigh of relief and pleasure.
It was good to be back in his own place again, the curtains drawn, the lamps glowing, the world shut out. He was happier here than anywhere else, after all! It was here in this beautiful room, with its books and pictures, its cultured comfort, that the real events of his life took place, those splendid hours of solitude, when he set down the vivid experiences of his crowded life with all the skill and power God had given him, and he himself had cultivated so manfully and well.
Now for it! Tired as his mind was, there lay a time of deep thinking before it. There was the article for to-morrow to group and arrange. It was probably the most important piece of work he had ever been called upon to do. It would startle the world, and it behoved him to put forth all his energies.
Yet there was something else. He must consider the problem of the cigarette-case first. It was immediate and disturbing.
How had this thing come into Sir William's possession? What communication had Gouldesbrough had with Guy Rathbone? That they were rivals for the hand of Miss Poole Megbie knew quite well. Every one knew it. It was most unlikely that the two men could have been friends or even acquaintances. Indeed Megbie was almost certain that Rathbone did not know Sir William.