"Gilbert Connatt," I replied.
The lock scraped and the door opened. I looked into the handsome, ruddy face of a heavy, towering man who was perhaps a year younger than I and in much better physical condition. His was the wide, good-humored mouth, the short, straight nose of the Norman Scot. His blond hair was beginning to grow thin and his blue eyes seemed anxious.
"Come in, Mr. Connatt," he invited me, holding out his broad hand. "My name's Davidson—Elmo Davidson." And, as I entered, "This is Mr. Varduk." He might have been calling my attention to a prince royal.
I had come into a parlor, somberly decorated and softly lighted. Opposite me, in a shadowed portion, gazed a pallid face. It seemed to hang, like a mask, upon the dark tapestry that draped the wall. I was aware first of a certain light-giving quality within or upon that face, as though it were bathed in phosphorescent oil. It would have been visible, plain even, in a room utterly dark. For the rest there were huge, deep eyes of a color hard to make sure of, a nose somewhat thick but finely shaped, a mouth that might have been soft once but now drew tight as if against pain, and a strong chin with a dimple.
"How do you do, Mr. Connatt," said a soft, low voice, and the mask inclined politely. A moment later elbows came forward upon a desk, and I saw the rest of the man Varduk start out of his protective shadows. His dark, double-breasted jacket and the black scarf at his throat had blended into the gloom of the tapestry. So had his chestnut-brown curls. As I came toward him, Varduk rose—he was of middle height, but looked taller by reason of his slimness—and offered me a slender white hand that gripped like a smith's tongs.
"I am glad that you are joining us," he announced cordially, in the tone of a host welcoming a guest to dinner. "Miss Holgar needs old friends about her, for her new stage adventure is an important item in her splendid career. And this," he dropped his hand to a sheaf of papers on the desk, "is a most important play."
Another knock sounded at the door, and Elmo Davidson admitted a young woman, short and steady-eyed. She was Martha Vining, the character actress, who was also being considered for a rôle in the play.
"Only Miss Holgar to come," Davidson said to me, with a smile that seemed to ask for friendship. "We've only a small cast, you know; five."
"I am expecting one more after Miss Holgar," amended Varduk, and Davidson made haste to add: "That's right, an expert antiquary—Judge Keith Pursuivant. He's going to look at our manuscript and say definitely if it is genuine."
Not until then did Varduk invite me to sit down, waving me to a comfortable chair at one end of his desk. I groped in my pockets for a cigarette, but he pressed upon me a very long and very good cigar.