“Evidently,” returned the colonel dryly. “How can our absent friends get in otherwise—at least how can they let us understand they have come in? I think we are going to have the pleasure of an interview with the elusive Mr. Mercer.”
They waited. The colonel motioned Birdsall to a seat by the table, within breathing distance of the telephone. He himself fluttered the loose journals and magazines, his ironic smile creasing his cheek. “Our Japanese friend reads the newspapers,” he remarked. “Here are to-day’s papers; yes, Examiner and Chronicle, unfolded and smoked over. Cigar, too, not cigarette, for here is a stump—decidedly our cherry-blossom friends are getting civilized!”
“Oh, there is somebody in here all right,” grunted Birdsall. “Say, Colonel, you are sure Mrs. Winter has had no answer to her ad? No kind of notice about sending money?”
“I haven’t seen her for a few hours, but I saw Mrs. Melville Winter; she was positive no word had come. She thought my aunt was more worried than she would admit, and Miss Smith looked pale, although she seemed hopeful.”
“She didn’t really want to give me the letter, I thought,” said the detective. The colonel gave him no reply save a black look. A silence fell. A footfall outside broke it, a firm, in nowise stealthy footfall. Birdsall slipped his hand inside his coat. The colonel rose and bowed gravely to Cary Mercer.
On his part, Mercer was not in the least flurried; he looked at the two men, not with the arrogant suspicion which had stung Winter on the train, but with the melancholy courtesy of his bearing at Cambridge, three years before.
“This, I think, is Colonel Winter?” he said, returning the bow, but not extending his hand, which hung down, slack and empty at his side.
“I am glad you recognized me this time, Mr. Mercer.”
“I am sorry that I did not recognize you before,” answered Mercer. “Will you gentlemen be seated? I am not the owner of the house nor his son; I am not even a friend, only a casual acquaintance of the young man, but I seem to be rather in the position of host, so will you be seated, and may I offer you some Scotch and Shasta—Mr.—ah—”
“Mr. Horatio Birdsall, of the Birdsall and Gwen Detective Agency,” interposed Winter. Birdsall bowed. Mercer bowed. “Excuse me if I decline for us both; our time is limited—no, thank you, not a cigar, either. Now, Mr. Mercer, to come to the point, I want my nephew. I understand he is in this house.”