Gerald took it and read, "Mr. Tom Starkie."
"Says he wants to see you very perticler, sir."
"Into which room have you shown Mr. Starkie?"
"Into the blue room, sir."
"Say that I will be with him in one moment. Come, Clara, come, aunt," he said with a smile, as soon as Bunce had left the room; "let us go and hear what it is so 'perticler' that Mr. Tom has to say to me?"
None of them noticed that Margery had stolen out on to the terrace, and was there waiting and watching with her gaze fixed on a distant point of the high-road where it suddenly curved, before dipping into the valley on its way to the little market town of King's Harold. Twilight still lingered in the west, and Margery's eyes were almost as keen as those of a hawk.
[CHAPTER VI.]
The Blue Room into which Mr. Tom Starkie had been shown was at the back of the house, and its windows looked into a quaint old-fashioned garden with clipped hedges and shady alleys. In order to reach this room, visitors had to cross the entrance hall, then proceed along a wide corridor which intersected the house, with doors opening on either hand, after which they found themselves in a second hall almost as large as the first. An archway, from which depended a heavy portièr divided this hall from the Blue Room. This second hall, which was lighted by a cupola, was hung with a few family portraits, some arms pertaining to various countries and various epochs, together with sundry trophies of the chase.
A broad, shallow, oaken staircase, black with age, led to an upper floor, at the foot of which, on either hand, stood a man in armour with his visor down, grasping in his mailed right hand a lance half as tall again as himself. Tropical plants in tubs were disposed here and there.
Gerald Brooke, pushing aside the portière, advanced and shook hands with his visitor. Mrs. Brooke and her aunt had remained behind. It was just possible that Mr. Starkie might have something of a private nature to communicate to Gerald. "Brooke, what's this confounded mess you seem to have got yourself into?" he began, without a word of preface. He was a red-haired, open-faced, good-natured-looking young fellow of three or four and twenty. "Have you heard that Von Rosenberg is dead, and that you are accused of having murdered him?"