"I will try," he said, still feeling as if he were in some wild dream.
"When you have made inquiries," Stamfordham said, still speaking in a brief tone of command, "you had better come and tell me the result. I shall be at the Foreign Office till twelve."
"Till twelve. Very well," said Rendel, feeling as if there was a dark chasm between himself and that moment. Mechanically he let Lord Stamfordham out, and stood as the latter mounted and rode away. Then he turned back into the house.
CHAPTER XVI
He went into the dining-room first—Rachel was still upstairs—and picked up the Arbiter again, looking at it with this new, terrible interpretation of what he saw in it. There it was, as damning evidence as ever a man was convicted upon, the map that no one but himself and the two principals had seen, reproduced, roughly it is true, but still unmistakably, from the paper that he alone in the house had had in his possession. He turned hurriedly to the brief but guarded commentary evolved at a venture by Pateley, but nevertheless very near the truth. Pateley had played a bold game indeed, but he was playing it as skilfully and watchfully as was his wont. Rendel threw down the paper with a gesture of despair, then clenched his hands. If he had been a woman he would have wept from sheer misery and agitation. But it was of no good to clench his hands in despair; every moment that passed ought to be used to find out the truth of what had happened, to clear himself from that nightmare of suspicion.
He went hurriedly across the hall to his study with the instinct of one who feels that on the spot itself there may be some suggestion to help discovery. His writing-table was locked. He tried it, shook it. The key, one of a peculiar make, hung always on his watch-chain. It was quite impossible that, save by one who had the key, the table should have been opened. What had he done yesterday? What had happened? And he sat down and buried his face in his hands, concentrating his thoughts, trying to recall every incident. The first time that Stamfordham had come in and given him the rough notes and the map, he, Rendel, had been alone. There was no doubt of that. After that who came in? Rachel? No, Rachel had not been in the room with the papers except just at the end when Rendel was sealing up the packet. Besides, if Rachel had had a hundred secrets in her possession, they would have been as safe as in his own. Then he caught himself up—in his own! after all, he was suspected—so the impossible idea, apparently, could be entertained. Then the thought of Sir William Gore came into his mind, but only to be instantly dismissed, for since the papers were locked up in Rendel's writing-table they must have been as inaccessible to Sir William as though they had been separated from him by the walls of several apartments. And there was one thing pretty certain: Gore, supposing him to be capable of using it, had not got a duplicate key. "Even he," Rendel found himself thinking, "would not do that." He heard Rachel's step swiftly descend the stairs and go into the dining-room, then she came quickly across the hall to the study.
"Oh, there you are, Frank," she said. "My father is——" then she broke off as she saw that he was apparently buried in painful thought from which he roused himself with a start as she spoke. "Is anything the matter?"