He was consumed with a fever of anxiety which would not let him rest within four walls. He walked to Beechhurst, and unearthed a caretaker, who came strolling from the distant stables, where he had been enlivening his idleness by gossip with the grooms. The blinds and shutters were all closed. Nothing had been heard from Mr. Carew.
"If he were in England you would have heard from him, I suppose?" said Geoffrey.
"Yes, sir; he would have wired, no doubt. My wife is housekeeper, and she would have had notice to get the house ready."
"Even if Mr. Carew had gone to Suffolk, in the first instance?"
"I should think so, sir. He would know we should want time to prepare for him."
There was relief in this. Perhaps the Djemnah had carried no such passenger as the man whose return Geoffrey Wornock dreaded.
He went back to the Manor in the gloom of a November evening. The darkness and loneliness of the road suited his humour. He wanted to be alone, to think out the situation, to walk down the devil within him.
Matcham Church clock was chiming the third quarter after five when he opened the gate and went into Discombe Wood; but when the Discombe dressing-bell rang at half-past seven—an old-fashioned bell in a cupola, which gave needless information to every cottager within half a mile of the Manor House—Geoffrey had not come in.
His valet waited about for him till nearly dinner-time, and then went down to the drawing-room to ask Mrs. Wornock if his master was to dine at home.
"He is not in his dressing-room, ma'am. Will you wait dinner for him?"