‘I have placed complete confidence in you,’ said Ainslie, ‘and have intrusted to your keeping a secret, the importance of which you must be well aware of. I wish you to guard it carefully. You have kept that secret fairly enough,’ pointing to the scrap of writing; ‘try if you cannot keep this one too.—Do you understand?’
The landlord intimated that he would do as his visitor wished, and then departed, leaving Reginald to digest such thoughts as this conversation had called up.
The twilight was by this time gray, and very little light remained, while a few solitary objects that could be seen through the dimmed glass in the old casements, looked shadowy and opaque. With the exception of one small lamp, which Hobb Dipping had placed upon the table, the room was but imperfectly lighted by the flickering fire. Outside, the snow was silently falling, not thickly, but in large steady flakes. The wind had dropped, and with it the whirling drift, while the old walls of the Saxonford Arms had ceased to groan and creak.
‘Sir,’ said Hobb, reappearing once more, ‘the room’s ready. Shall I show you the way?’
Reginald motioned to the landlord to lead on, and they passed out together into a dark draughty passage.
‘This here’s the staircase, sir,’ remarked old Dipping, who was in advance, bearing the light; ‘and that be the very place where the poor gentleman fell.’
The landing before them was lighted by a gray ghostly window, which faded into insignificance on the approach of the landlord’s yellow, flaring lamp. When this apparition was passed, there came three shallow steps up, then a short dusky gallery, and Reginald Ainslie found himself in the room with which his departed relative had had so mysterious a connection.
‘This, sir,’ said old Hobb, extending his right hand somewhat after the manner of a travelling showman—‘this, sir, is Sir Carnaby’s room.’
‘Well, landlord,’ said Reginald, ‘I think I need detain you no longer.’
Bidding mine host good-night, Ainslie carefully fastened the door, and then sat down before the fire, to ponder over his strange situation, ere consigning himself to rest for the night.