THE EXPEDITION
Every room in every house has its mystery by day and by night. But at night the mystery becomes more involved and a darker veil gathers round the secret. Each inmate goes off to bed with a smiling good-night to each other, and what could be more unlike than the hopes and plans and schemes for the morrow which each in silence is forming? All this of course is obvious and commonplace. But there would be a certain novelty of illustration if we were to take the fall of night upon Seagate Hall and try to make out what secrets it covered.
Ericson had found a means of letting Helena know by a few whispered words that he had heard news which would probably cut short his visit to Seagate Hall and hurry his departure from London. The girl had listened with breath kept resolutely in and bosom throbbing, and she dared not question further at such a moment. Only she said, 'You will tell me all?' and he said, 'Yes, to-morrow'; and she subsided and was content to wait and to take her secret to sleep with her, or rather take her secret with her to keep her from sleeping. Mrs. Sarrasin had found means to tell her husband what Dolores had told her—and Sarrasin agreed with his wife in thinking that, although the discovery might appear trivial in itself, it had possibilities in it the stretch of which it would be madness to underrate. Ericson and Hamilton had common thoughts concerning the expedition to Gloria; but Hamilton had not confided to the Dictator any hint of what Mrs. Sarrasin had told him, and what Dolores had told Mrs. Sarrasin. On the other hand, Ericson did not think it at all necessary to communicate to Hamilton the feelings with which the prospect of a speedy leaving of Seagate Hall had inspired him. Soame Rivers, we may be sure, took no one into the secret of the cyphered despatch which he had received, and which as yet he had kept in his own exclusive possession. If the gifted Professor Flick and his devoted friend Mr. Copping had secrets—as no doubt they had—they could hardly be expected to proclaim them on the house-tops of Seagate Hall—a place on the shores of a foreign country. The common feeling cannot be described better than by saying that everybody wanted everybody else to get to bed.
The ladies soon dispersed. But no sooner had Mrs. Sarrasin got into her room than she hastily mounted a dressing-gown and sought out Dolores, and the two settled down to low-toned earnest talk as though they were a pair of conspirators—which for a noble purpose they were.
The gentlemen, as usual, went to the billiard-room for cigars and whisky-and-soda. The two Americans soon professed themselves rather tired, and took their candles and went off to bed. But even they would seem not to be quite so sleepy and tired as they may have fancied; for they both entered the room of Professor Flick and began to talk. It was a very charming 'apartment' in the French sense. The Professor had a sitting-room very tastefully furnished and strewn around with various books on folk-lore; and he had a capacious bedroom. Copping flung himself impatiently on the sofa.
'Look here,' Copping whispered, 'this business must be done to-night. Do you hear?—this very night.'
'I know it,' the Professor said almost meekly.
'What have you heard?' Copping asked fiercely. 'Do you know anything more about Gloria than I know—than I got to know to-night?'
'Nothing more about Gloria, but I know that I am on the straight way to being found out.' And the Professor drooped.
'Found out? What do you mean? Found out for what?'