‘What an unpleasant old bird!’ said Prenderby, looking at Abbershaw. He spoke lightly, but there was a worried expression in his eyes; one hand rested over his fiancée’s, who sat very pale by his side apparently on the verge of tears. Even Anne Edgeware’s magnificent sang-froid seemed a little shaken, and Meggie, although the least alarmed of the three girls, looked very white.
Wyatt was still angry. He gave up trying to apologize for the incident, however, and joined with the others in discussing it.
‘He’s loony, of course,’ said Martin Watt lazily. ‘Campion got his goat beautifully, I thought.’
‘Still, even if he is potty, if what he says is true, things are going to be pretty sportive,’ remarked Chris Kennedy cheerfully. ‘I fear I may be called upon to bash his head in.’
Abbershaw rose to his feet.
‘I don’t know what you think, Wyatt,’ he said, ‘but it occurs to me that it might be an idea if we all went into the other room and talked this thing over. The servants won’t disturb us there. I don’t think there’s any real danger,’ he went on reassuringly, ‘but perhaps we ought to find out if what Gideon says about the cars is true.’
Chris Kennedy got up eagerly.
‘I’ll toddle down and discover, shall I?’ he said. ‘Really – I should like to,’ he added, as Wyatt regarded him doubtfully, and he went off whistling.
The party adjourned to the next room as Abbershaw had suggested. They still talked lightly, but there was a distinctly constrained atmosphere amongst them. Jeanne was frankly scared, Anne Edgeware out of her depth, and the rest apprehensive.
Abbershaw was the last to step into the enormous hall that was now a blaze of sunlight. It poured in through long diamond-paned windows, glinted on the polished floor, and shone softly on Tudor rose and linenfold. But it was not these which caught his eye and made him start back with a half-concealed exclamation.