“You can rely on me,” was all he said, and thereupon Gimblet ran up to the door, calling to Higgs to open it.
The other men were sitting as he had left them, Sir Gregory in an arm-chair by the library fire-place, and the clerk in the hall; both drooped in attitudes of extreme weariness.
“Will you please stay where you are a little longer?” Gimblet said to Sir Gregory. “I am going upstairs with Mr. Brampton, to see if he can tell me one or two things I want to know about the ordinary disposal of the furniture; and after that we will go home, unless you will be guided by me and do so at once. No? Well, we shall not be long. We shall not want you,” he added to Tremmels, who was struggling stiffly to rise from his seat.
At Gimblet’s words he sank back again, and leant his head weakly against the wall.
With a sign to Higgs and Brampton to follow him, Gimblet went upstairs.
The gas was still burning in the drawing-room, and the door stood open as he had left it. Gimblet paused on the threshold and drew Brampton’s attention to the sofa opposite.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “whether that sofa had a cover like the other before Mr. Mill went away?”
Brampton looked at it doubtfully.
“I can’t say I do really,” he said. “I ought to know, of course, but I don’t feel quite sure. You see, the colouring is so much like that of the chintzes. One might never notice it. Still, the legs are very ugly; I think I should have observed them. And it is not like Mrs. Mill to leave an ugly thing so plainly displayed. But on the whole I’m not certain about it.”
“Don’t you feel,” said Gimblet, “that there is something terrible, something fearful, in those shining brown pieces of wood? Their ugliness should be decently covered. Unfortunately, I am afraid I know where to look for their covering.”