Then, “Good G—d!” he muttered. “Look! Look!” Stubbs looked. They both looked. Beyond the lawn, on the farther side of the iron grille and clinging to it with both hands, a man stood bareheaded under the rain. Whether he had come uncovered, or his hat had been jerked from him by some movement caused by their appearance, they could not tell; nor how long he had stood thus, gazing at them through the bars. But they could see that his eyes never wavered, that his hands gripped the iron, and the two knew by instinct that in the intensity of his hate, the man was insensible alike to the rain that drenched him, and to the wind that blew out the skirts of his thin black coat.
Even Stubbs held his breath. Even he felt that there was something uncanny and ominous in the appearance. For the gazer was John Audley.
CHAPTER XVII
TO THE RESCUE
Stubbs was the first to collect himself, but a minute elapsed before he spoke. Then, “He must be mad,” he cried, “mad, to expose himself to the weather at his age. If I had not seen it, I couldn’t believe it!”
“I suppose it is John Audley?”
“Yes.” Then raising his voice, “My lord! I don’t think I would go to him now!”
But Audley was already striding across the lawn towards the gate. The lawyer hesitated, gave way, and followed him.
They were within twenty paces of the silent watcher when he moved—up to that time he might have been a lay figure. He shook one hand in the air, as if he would beat them off, then he turned and walked stiffly away. Half a dozen steps took him out of sight. The Yew Walk swallowed him.
But, quickly as he vanished, the lawyer had had time to see that he staggered. “I fear, my lord, he is ill,” he said. “He will never reach the Gatehouse in that state. I had better follow him.”
“Why the devil did he come here?” Audley retorted savagely. The watcher’s strange aspect, his face, white against the dark yews, his stillness, his gesture, a something ominous in all, had shaken him. “If he had stopped at home——”