“I need all the luck I’ve ever possessed, and all the impudence with which nature has endowed me,” he thought. “Why—I don’t even know my way about my own house—shan’t know where to turn, when I get inside, or what the servants’ names are. And I wish I knew what sort of man Dandy Chater was—whether he bullied, or was soft-spoken—swore, or quoted Scripture.”
The fly drew up, with a jerk, at the hall door, which was already open. A young servant—a pleasant-looking lad, of about twenty years of age, in a sober brown livery, ran out quickly, with a forefinger raised to his forehead, and opened the door of the fly.
“Morning, sir,” said this individual, in a voice as pleasant as his face. “Hoped you’d telegraph, sir, and let me drive over for you.”
Crowdy alighted slowly, looking keenly about him. “I hadn’t time,” he said, gruffly—being convinced, for some strange reason, that the late Dandy Chater had been of a somewhat overbearing disposition. He walked slowly up the steps, and into Chater Hall.
There his troubles began; for, in the first place, he did not even know his room—did not, as he had already suggested, even know which way to turn. In desperation, he laid his hand on the knob of the first door he saw, and walked boldly in.
He found himself in what was evidently the dining-room. He turned, as he was passing through the doorway, and beckoned to the young servant, who had taken his hat and coat, and who was lingering in the hall.
“Here, I want you,” he said. His quick eye, roving round the room, had seen a pipe on the mantelshelf, and a spirit stand on an ancient Sheraton sideboard. “Get me a whiskey and soda, and bring me those cigars—the last lot I had.”
The servant placed the spirit stand at his master’s elbow, and hurried away to complete the order. Philip Crowdy leaned back in his chair, and laughed softly, when he thought of how well he was carrying the thing off. “I must be as natural as possible,” he muttered. “That was a good move about the cigars.”
The servant reëntered the room, bringing the cigars, and a letter which he handed to Crowdy.
“Brought this morning, sir, quite early,” he said.