"Ah! yes, of course," Arthur agreed. "I'll go now." He could have no doubt that this was a command. Turner had put down his cue as if he had been prepared for some such development as this, and took no further interest in the game. Nevertheless there must have been still something that he did not know, for he looked at Eleanor with raised eyebrows, plainly hinting a question the nature of which she, presumably, could guess; although the slight shrug of her shoulders with which she replied intimated that she did not, as yet, know the answer.
Arthur pondered that exchange of signals as he dressed. He had begun to wonder whether he might not find an explanation of various things that had puzzled him at Hartling; in the desire of the Kenyons to conceal a family secret. Was it not possible that the head of the house was slightly insane? If that were so, everything could be accounted for: their references to people coming in "from the outside"; their half-suspicious reception of himself; the separation of the old man from the family-life except at lunch and dinner; the constant attendance of Eleanor.... Arthur was inclined to believe that he had guessed the riddle, and resolved to be very observant during the coming interview.
He was tying his bow when some one knocked at his bedroom door. He guessed that it was Eleanor come to fetch him, and snatching at his waistcoat, called out, "One minute! I won't be a moment." But when he opened the door a few seconds later, he was amazed to find old Mr Kenyon himself standing outside.
"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't realise ..." Arthur began.
The old man waved aside his apology. "I quite understand," he said. "Naturally you were not expecting me. May I come in?"
"Oh! please. Yes, do," Arthur responded. He felt embarrassed by this strange mark of favour. He had pictured the promised interview as likely to be something of a function. Was it possible that the old man had temporarily escaped from his keeper?
Mr Kenyon had seated himself in a little chintz-covered arm-chair and appeared quite at his ease.
"We shall be quieter here," he said with a smile. "Smoke if you want to. I haven't smoked now for fifty years, but I don't at all dislike it."
Arthur took advantage of this indulgence with a faint smile at the whimsical reflection that the old man had abandoned the habit of smoking more than twenty years before Arthur himself had been born. Mr Kenyon apparently read the young man's thought, for he went on:—