He was disturbed at last by the appearance of a footman, who brought the announcement that a Colonel Holles was demanding insistently to see his grace.
Irritated, Buckingham was about to pronounce dismissal.
“Say that....” He checked. He remembered the letter received three days ago, and its urgent appeal. That awoke an idea, and set his grace speculating. “Wait!” He moistened his lips and his eyes narrowed in thought. Slowly they lighted from their gloom. Abruptly he rose. “Bring him in,” he said.
Holles came, erect and soldierly of figure, still tolerably dressed, but very haggard now of countenance at the end of that weary day spent between Wapping and the Guildhall with the sense that he was being hunted.
“Your grace will forgive, I trust, my importunities,” he excused himself, faltering a little. “But the truth is that my need, which was very urgent when I wrote, has since grown desperate.”
Buckingham considered him thoughtfully from under his bent brows without directly replying. He dismissed the waiting footman, and offered his visitor a chair. Holles sat down wearily.
His grace remained standing, his thumbs hooked into the girdle of his bedgown.
“I received your letter,” he said in his slow, pleasant voice. “From my silence you may have supposed that you had passed from my mind. That is not so. But you realize, I think, that you are not an easy man to help.”
“Less than ever now,” said Holles grimly.
“What’s that?” There was a sudden unmistakable quickening of the Duke’s glance, almost as if he welcomed the news.