Two waiters came in with hot dishes; we sat down. I don’t know if Parslewe had expected us to be unusually hungry, but he had certainly taken pains to order a delightful lunch and to prove to us that he had a very nice and critical taste in champagne. And all the time we were lunching he kept the waiters in the room, artfully, I thought, lest Madrasia should open out on the subject uppermost in our thoughts; true, he talked freely himself, but it was all about a play that he had seen at the Theatre Royal on the previous evening, and of which he was enthusiastically full.
“But you shall see it yourself to-night,” he wound up. “I’ve booked two seats—Craye shall take you.”
“And—you?” asked Madrasia. “Won’t it bear seeing twice in succession?”
“I’ve some business,” he answered. “I shall be out when you return; we’ll compare notes in the morning.”
I saw that Madrasia was dying to ask him what his business was, but the waiters were still in the room. It was not until they had served us with coffee and gone away for good that Parslewe came to what we certainly regarded as business. Giving me a cigar and lighting one himself, he turned his chair towards the hearth, settled in an easy position with one elbow on the table, and flung us a glance over his shoulder.
“Now, then!” he said. “What’s gone on up yonder since I left? And as you can’t both speak at once, settle between yourselves which is going to be spokesman. But first—where is that box?”
Madrasia, the morning being cold, had come in furs; amongst them a big muff, in the pocket of which she had carried the copper box. She rose, extracted it from its hiding-place, and laid it on the table at Parslewe’s side; then she pointed a finger at me.
“Let him tell,” she said. “I’ll correct him where he’s wrong.”
“Go ahead, Craye,” commanded Parslewe. “Detail!”
I told him of everything that had happened at Kelpieshaw since his own mysterious disappearance, watching him carefully and even narrowly as I talked. He listened silently and impassively; only once did he interrupt me, and that was to ask for a more particular description of Mr. Augustus Weech. He seemed to reflect a good deal when he got that, but he let me go on to the end without further questioning, and received the message from Murthwaite just as phlegmatically as he had taken in everything else. In point of absolute inscrutability and imperviousness Parslewe in that particular mood of his could have given points to the Sphinx.