When he reached the street Thomson discovered that he had left his right-hand glove in Mrs. Carling’s flat. Not worth returning for it, he decided, thrusting his hand into his overcoat pocket. He would go round as he had suggested some evening and renew his acquaintance with Maria Culpepper—little Maria, whose very existence he had forgotten for so many years. The glove would provide an excuse.
Strange, indeed, to meet her again in their old age, like a ghost of the past. As he walked slowly along Buckingham Gate he deliberately and more or less successfully tried to recall recollections of those youthful days in Paris, and found it quite an interesting experiment—as interesting as turning out some old cupboard full of forgotten relics and rubbish.
“Yes, she was a pretty little creature,” he concluded. “Cheerful as a bird, and a nice hand at cribbage she could play too—very nice. P’r’aps she can still. I wonder where we’d have been now if we hadn’t drifted apart? It was her fault though; for, now I come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I did write, and she never answered. Well, well.”
Still musing, he made his way back to Grosvenor Gardens. It was nominally his “evening out,” an institution Sir Robert had recently insisted on reviving. Thomson himself wanted no evening out—wanted nothing but to continue to tend the stricken master whom he served with such silent, dogged, and dog-like devotion. It was still early, only just after eight o’clock, and he meant to spend the remainder of this his leisure evening in his own room, within call if he should be needed.
As he neared the great house, so silent and dark in these days, with the shadow of tragedy still heavy upon it, he saw a motor car before the door, and quickened his pace, fearing that Sir Robert might have had a relapse and that this was the doctor’s car. He was reassured as he recognized the car as Lord Warrington’s Rolls-Royce, but at the same instant experienced a minor shock; for a tall, slender man, wearing a furred overcoat, approaching from the opposite direction, paused, looked up at the house, and then knocked and rang. That man was Boris Melikoff.
Earl Warrington and Melikoff both visiting Sir Robert together! What was in the wind now, he asked himself perplexedly, as, unobserved, he went down the area steps and let himself in at the basement door. Much-privileged servant that he was, he had for years possessed his own latchkey, and came and went as he chose, accountable to none but his master.
By the back staircase he made his way to the first floor and entered his own room—a fair sized, comfortable apartment at the end of the suite occupied by his master, and with a door that led direct into Sir Robert’s bedroom.
Before the fire, in the one easy chair, reading an evening paper, was a nice-looking fresh-complexioned young man, Perkins, the male nurse, who, with Thomson himself, took charge of the invalid.
“I didn’t expect you back so soon, Mr. Thomson,” he said, rising deferentially. “Sir Robert’s had his dinner all right, and there’s a gentleman with him now.”