“No, sir. Should you wish me to 'phone you again before tomorrow morning, sir?”
“No, Elizabeth.”
“Thank you, sir. Good-by, sir.”
“Good-by, Elizabeth.”
XXXV
The rest of the party has scattered to the gardens or the porch—Oliver has wandered into the library alone to wait for Peter who is bringing around the two-seater himself. It is a big dim room with books all the way up to the ceiling and a comfortable leather lounge upon which he sinks, picks up a magazine from a little table beside it and starts ruffling the pages idly. The chirrup of a telephone bell that seems to come out of the wall beside him makes him jump.
Then he remembers—that must be Mr. Piper's office through the closed door there. He remembers, as well, Peter joking with his father once about his never getting away from business even in the country and pointing at the half dozen telephones on top of the big flat desk with a derisive gesture while detailing to Oliver the fondness that Sargent Piper has for secretive private wires and the absurd precautions he takes to keep them intensely private. “Why he went and had all his special numbers here changed once just because I found out one of them by mistake and called him up on it for a joke—the cryptic old person!” Peter had said with mocking affection.
The telephone chirrups again and Oliver gets up and goes toward the door of the office with a vague idea of answering it since there seem to be no servants about. Then he remembers something else—Peter's telling him that nothing irritates his father more than having anyone else answer one of his private wires—and stops with his hand on the door that has swung inward an inch or so already under his casual pressure. It doesn't matter anyhow—there—somebody has answered it—Mr. Piper probably, as there is another door to the office and both of them are generally kept locked. Mr. Piper like all great business men has his petty idiosyncrasies.
Oliver is just starting to turn away when a whisper of sound that seems oddly like “Mrs. Severance” comes to his ear by some trick of acoustics through the door. He hesitates—and stays where he is, wondering all the time why he is doing anything so silly and unguest-like—and also what on earth he could say if Mr. Piper suddenly flung open the door. But Ted has told him a good deal at various times of the more mysterious aspects of Mrs. Severance, and her name jumping out at him this way from the middle of Mr. Piper's private office makes it rather hard to act like a copybook gentleman—especially with his last conversation with Ted still plain in his mind.