PART I
CHAPTER I
THE GAME
Richards looked carefully over the table with the eye of the well-trained manservant. He retouched a bowl of lilac that offended against his slavish idea of symmetry and then put a screen across the dying fire.
It was the end of May and the night was warm, but as Carey Image was to be one of the guests that evening, Richards had seen to it that the room was well heated. For Carey Image had just come back from five years’ sojourn on the frontier of India, and Richards was afraid that the rigours of the Eastern climate—particularly trying to a man in the fifties—might strike a chill into his sunbaked body. He was thinking about him as he placed the screen, for Richards had been in the Currey family for many years, and he remembered well the genial little man, generous with his pourboires and “full of pleasant remarks”—the expression was Richards’ own, communicated to his wife, the cook—who had been godfather to the owner of the rooms thirty-two years ago, and had, on the occasion of the christening, optimistically prophesied that the baby would grow into a remarkable man.
Richards had heard the remark, and he now recalled it as he drew the curtains. Was not Carey Image’s prophecy coming true? He had been the first in the field, if one may use that expression of a prophet, but others now began to endorse his opinion.
“Wonderful how he knew,” muttered Richards to himself, “for babies is that alike, all pink and squally.”
Then by a natural sequence of thought Richards glanced at a large photograph of his master in wig and gown which reposed on a table, and which had been taken at the request of his mother, who lamented afterwards that it made him look too severe and old. A remarkable man? No, the title was not yet earned; for no man is remarkable until he is forty and has buried the prophet, his godfather. Still, Gilbert Currey was well on the way to success, and that very week had seen him take a big stride forward. Had not his success in the Driver case made the eyes of the legal profession and a good many of the public turn towards him? Richards was old-fashioned enough to take a pride in the fortunes of his master.
A slight noise through the curtains which shut off the dining-room from the room in the front portion of the flat caused the butler to turn. One of the guests had arrived early. He must apologize for his master’s non-appearance. Gilbert Currey was still dressing; he generally rushed home from his chambers at the last moment.