“I must have missed that. Let me see it, please.” Armitage produced the portrait from under the others, where Madame Ladoguin had dexterously slipped it instead of passing it on to Eirene. It was a pencil sketch, worked up with a good deal of care. One foot impatiently advanced, Wylie seemed almost to be stepping out of the picture, with a look of reckless resolution on his face.
“Oh, this is lifelike. How well I know that expression!” said Eirene, with a smile and a sigh over the memories called up by the portrait. “But the picture should be coloured. Nothing can do justice to Captain Wylie that does not show the colour of his eyes.”
“This is merely a rough sketch, ma’am. I happened to catch him in an attitude I liked. I tell him I shall work it up into a picture of him terrorising an army with a riding-whip, à la General Gordon.”
“You will be obliged to alter the background, then. Why place a soldier in such sylvan surroundings?”
“Oh, that was a bit of woodland I wanted to get in somewhere,” said the artist frankly. “I was rather proud of it, because I thought I had got the look of that particular kind of bush rather well. You don’t like it, ma’am?” with some disappointment. “Perhaps if you saw it in a better light——?” He moved towards the window, and Eirene turned in her chair.
“I see you have made him sign it. What a bold hand he writes!” she observed easily. “Yes, Mr Armitage, I think I did you an injustice. The growth of that particular shrub must be very difficult to render. It is the sweet-scented plant that grows in thickets, is it not?”
She spoke lightly, almost at random, for Armitage had placed the sketch in her hands upside-down, and all the shading of the bushes was discernible as writing.
“You must manage to receive me. When can I see you? Where are the Smiths? I am certain there has been foul play. I have been trying in every possible way for weeks to get an interview with you, but have been assured that you refused it. Only tell me where Smith and his sister are, and how to help them, and I will give you no more trouble. You cannot be so heartless as to abandon them to no one knows what fate.—James Graham Wylie.”
“When was this taken? Captain Wylie looks thinner than when I saw him,” Eirene went on.
“Two days ago, ma’am.”