"Yes," Sir William answered. "She has promised that, but I fear what her answer will be. Well, we must hope for the best, Lady Poole. If I were you I shouldn't worry. Leave everything to me. I have everything at stake."
"Well, I felt I must come and tell you, William," Lady Poole said. "I felt that it would help you to know exactly how things stand. Perhaps all will come well. Girls are very difficult to manage. I wanted Marjorie to go out a great deal in order to occupy her mind and to keep her from brooding over this absurd fancy that Guy Rathbone is alive. But she seems to shun all engagements. However, she's fortunately thought that she would like to try her hand at writing something, she was always interested in books, you know. So she's spending a good deal of time over it—a story I think—and Mr. Donald Megbie is helping her. He calls now and then and makes suggestions on what she has done. A nice, quiet little man he seems, and a fervent admirer of yours. I sounded him on that point the other day. So even this little fancy of Marjorie's for writing may turn out to be a help. Mr. Megbie is sure to become enthusiastic if your name is mentioned in any way, and it will keep the fact of how the world regards you well before Marjorie. Now, good-bye. It's a relief to have come and told you everything. I must fly, and I know you will want to get back to your electricity and things."
Sir William went with her to the garden-gate in the wall, where her carriage was waiting. Then he went back to the study and took down the speaking-tube that communicated with the large laboratory. He asked Wilson Guest to come to him at once.
In a few minutes the assistant shambled in. His eyes were bright with the liquid brightness of alcoholic poisoning; his speech was much clearer and more decided than it had been earlier in the day. It had tone and timbre. The crimson blotches on the face were less in evidence. Guest had drunk a bottle of whisky since breakfast-time, a quantity which would hopelessly intoxicate three ordinary men and probably kill one. But this enormous quantity of spirit was just sufficient, in the case of this man, to make him as near the normal as he could ever get. A bottle of whisky in the morning acted upon the drink-sodden tissues as a single peg might act upon an ordinary person who was jaded and faint.
Gouldesbrough knew all the symptoms of his assistant's disease very well. He recognized that the moment in the day when Guest was most himself and was most useful had now arrived. The effects of yesterday's drinking were now temporarily destroyed.
"I want your help, Wilson," he said, with a strange look in his eyes. "I want to resume the discussion we were beginning when Lady Poole called. You are all right now?"
"Oh yes, William," the man answered without a trace of his usual giggle, with the former sly malice of his manner quite obliterated. "This is my good hour. I feel quite fit—for me—and I'm ready. About Rathbone you mean?"
"Exactly. Lady Poole has given me to understand that her daughter is still pining after this person."
"Call him a thing, William. He isn't a person any more. He is just a part of our machinery, nothing more. And moreover a part of our machinery that is getting worn out, that we don't want any more, and that we ought to get rid of."
"You think so?"