"The matter?" Esdaile began once more to parry; and then suddenly his manner changed. For the first time he looked up from the floor, and the mask, whatever it was, almost dropped. "Look here, you fellows," he said almost appealingly, "you might see I'm a bit worried. I've been trying to hide it, but perhaps it wasn't much of an effort. Not so dashed easy to hide. But if you're suggesting that I've been somewhere else besides in the cellar I can only tell you I haven't. Couldn't for one thing; Rooke's got every key of this house. I had to get the cellar one from him. By the way, what's he doing now?"
"Looking out your next train. But what I want to know is——"
He broke off suddenly as sounds were heard over our heads. About the snowslip on the roof other shadowy shapes could be seen. Feet shuffled and moved, and the broken branch was dragged away. They were preparing to get the two men down.
And until they should have finished our conversation ceased.
But in the meantime Esdaile did yet another trivial incongruous thing. Moving towards one set of blind-cords he motioned to me to take another set. With short sticking tugs we drew the blinds across a foot at a time, and soon only narrow gold lozenges of sunlight showed among the rafters. All below was a dark blue twilight, as if for an obsequy within instead of for one on the roof.
Then, when from the cessation of sound all appeared to be over, Hubbard made a fresh appeal. He took the painters arm.
"Now let's have this out," he said. "No good letting a thing get way on when a few plain words will stop it. A perfectly ordinary thing's happened. Simple parachute accident. No mystery about it whatever. The mystery only begins when you come in carrying your damned candles and dropping jars and coming in here to tidy up instead of going outside to see what's happened. That's where the answer begins to be a lemon, my son. Listen to me. Whether you heard that crash or whether you didn't, at any rate you know all about it now. Then why can't you be just decently upset like the rest of us and have done with it?"
"Decently upset?" The words seemed to strike him. "Have I been behaving any other way?"
"You were behaving damnably indecently when you came up out of the orlop there—and that was before you were told a word of all this, remember."
At last Esdaile saw the point. His behavior had been extraordinary for whole minutes before the situation had been explained to him. One would have thought that during those minutes he had been deliberately trying to find out how much we knew about something or other before committing himself. When next he spoke it was almost apologetically.