“Do you recognize the sword, Aubrey?” asked the Duchess, with manifestly restrained impatience.
Playford looked at her with a fine assumption of surprise. “No. Why? Ought I to?” he asked. “Do you know the owner?”
“I thought you did,” she returned pointedly.
He handed it back with a laugh. “Not I. It is not an uncommon device. I fancy even Scotland Yard will have some trouble in following up that clue. Thanks for letting me see it, Duchess. I’m afraid I have rather a taste for the morbid.”
She was evidently not going to get anything out of him that would pay for the trouble of fetching the corpus delicti, and so her Grace wrapped it up again in no very amiable mood. Her visitor’s reticence was the more exasperating in that her instinct told her he could, if he chose, give a shrewd guess at the owner. Except as a matter of feminine curiosity she did not care much to know what she was convinced Playford might have told her; but she did not consider it consistent with her dignity to be thus made use of, and she felt very much inclined to be rude to her departing guest. And it is given to Duchesses to be very rude when they like. Then a certain idea of the inexpediency of venting her spleen occurred to her just in time; perhaps she realized that Aubrey Playford was a dangerous man for even a Duchess to snub, and she let him go in peace.
But the Duke, who dared not go out, remained to her; and he went to bed that night feeling that the world may be made very unpleasant, even for a Duke.
CHAPTER V
THE MAN WHO GUESSED
COUNTESS ALEXIA of Rohnburg had had a few of her intimate friends to luncheon at the house in Green Street, and the last of them, Mary Riverdale, was still sitting with her in cosy chat when a note was brought in. That her hostess did not like the look of the handwriting on the envelope, Miss Riverdale was sure. But she forbore the comment to which her intimacy might have entitled her, and contented herself with running through a picture book while Alexia read the note.
“Is—any one waiting?” the Countess had asked.
“No, madame,” answered the man, unsatisfyingly laconic, as became his position.