XIX
She shut the door and locked it with a hasty movement and came back.
“Who was it?” he said, with rising excitement.
“Only Mr. Drinkwater.”
“Drinkwater! What can he want here?”
Neither had the slightest suspicion of the lawyer’s complicity in the events of the night before. The scraping knock began again.
“We’ll see him,” he said, all at once, his curiosity whetted, and, in obedience to his signal, she went to the door and opened it cautiously—far enough to permit Drinkwater’s slipping into the room. Dangerfield was at the further end, standing by the head of the table, where the light of two candlesticks lit up his round, shaggy head and deep eyes.
Drinkwater glided across the room until only the table separated them, before jerking his head backward to where Inga in the shadow stood guard at the door.
“Mr. Dangerfield,” he said, “I have come here with a message from some one—” he stopped, blew nervously through his nose, and continued—“some one you may guess—some one close to you. The message is strictly private.”
“Go on. I’ll hear it,” said Dangerfield, bending his brows down and playing with a paper-weight that happened to be near by. The whole attitude held so much threat that the lawyer’s eyes calculated the proportions of the table that served him as a barricade.