"To be sure. You ought not to be out with such a cold at night, my boy," he answered. "You will find a decanter of the Scotch whisky you gave me last Christmas on the tray. Will you have some with hot water and a lemon, George? The servants are all at the theater--Gerald begged a holiday for them--but Barnes will get you the things in a minute."
"Thank you; I won't trouble him. I will take some with cold water," I replied, thinking I should gain in this way what I wanted--time to think; five minutes to myself while they played.
But I was out of my reckoning. "I will have mine now, too," he said. "Will you mix it, Gerald?"
Gerald jumped up to do it, with tolerable alacrity. I sat still, preferring to help myself when he should have attended to his father, if his father it was. I felt more easy now that I had those papers in my pocket. The more I thought of it the more certain I became that they were the object aimed at by whatever deviltry was on foot, and that possession of them gave me the whip hand. My young gentleman might snarl and show his teeth, but the prize had escaped him.
Perhaps I was a little too confident, a little too contemptuous of my opponent; a little too proud of the firmness with which I had taken at one and the same time the responsibility and the post of vantage. A creak of the board behind the screen roused me from my thoughts. It fell upon my ear trumpet-tongued, a sudden note of warning. I glanced up with a start and a conviction that I was being caught napping, and looked instinctively toward the young man. He was busy at the tray, his back to me. Relieved of my fear of I did not know what,--perhaps a desperate attack upon my pocket,--I was removing my eyes, when, in doing so, I caught sight of his reflection in a small mirror beyond him. Ah!
What was he busy about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, at the moment. He was standing motionless,--I could fancy him breathless also,--a strange, listening expression on his face, which seemed to me to have faded to a grayish tinge. His left hand was clasping a half-filled tumbler, the other was at his waistcoat pocket. So he stood during perhaps a second or two, a small lamp upon the tray before him illumining his handsome figure; and then his eyes, glancing up, met the reflection of mine in the mirror. Swiftly as the thought itself could pass from brain to limb, the hand which had been resting in the pocket flashed with a clatter among the glasses; and, turning almost as quickly, he brought one of the latter to the chess table, and set it down unsteadily.
What had I seen? Nothing, actually nothing. Just what Gerald had been doing. Yet my heart was going as many strokes to the minute as a losing crew. I rose abruptly.
"Wait a moment, sir," I said, as the elder man laid his hand upon the glass. "I don't think that Gerald has mixed this quite as you like it."
He had already lifted it to his lips. I looked from him to Gerald. That young gentleman's color, though he faced me hardily, shifted more than once, and he seemed to be swallowing a succession of oversized fives balls; but his eyes met mine in a vicious kind of smile that was not without its gleam of triumph. I was persuaded that all was right even before his father said so.
"Perhaps you have mixed for me, Gerald?" I suggested pleasantly.