The regular clock-work routine of social machinery must go on in despite of accidents, and accordingly the down-train reached Pebworth at 3.40 (or, to tell the truth, a few minutes behind time) with its usual punctuality. There was no omnibus, whether from the De Vere Arms or from the opposition or White Hart hotel, in waiting at the station, wherefore the few arrivals had to consign their bales and bags and boxes of samples to the wheelbarrows of porters, for conveyance to whichever house of entertainment they designed to patronise. Amongst these was a thickset middle-aged man, with trim whiskers, a dust-coloured overcoat, a slim umbrella, and a plump black bag, which he preferred to carry as he trudged from the station to the hotel.
There was nothing very noteworthy about the new-comer, who was neatly dressed in black, and wore a hat that was just old enough to have lost its first tell-tale gloss, except that he had evidently striven to look some years younger than the parish register would have proclaimed him. Thus the purplish tint of his thick whiskers and thinned hair, heedfully brushed and parted so as to make the most of it, savoured of art rather than nature. His cravat too, instead of being black, was what haberdashers call a scarf of blue silk, of a dark shade certainly, but still blue, and was secured by a massive golden horse-shoe. Glittering trinkets rattled at his watch-chain, and his boots were tighter and brighter than the boots of men of business usually are. There is or ought to be a sort of fitness between clothes and their wearer, but in the case of this traveller, obviously bound for the De Vere Arms, no such fitness existed. That cold gray eye, those deeply marked crow’s-feet, the coarse mouth, and mottled complexion, consorted ill with the pretensions to dandyism indicated by a portion of their owner’s attire. Altogether, the man might have been set down as a corn-doctor, a quack, a projector of bubble companies, or possibly an auctioneer whose hammer seldom fell to a purely legitimate bid in a fair market.
As the stranger drew near to the hotel, having inquired his way once or twice from such of the natives as the great attraction of the day had not allured to the race-course, a carriage dashed past him at a very fast pace indeed, and drew up with a jerk in front of the De Vere Arms. The gentleman who alighted from it, tall, and of a goodly presence, lingered for an instant in the doorway to give some order to his servants. As he did so, his eyes encountered those of the traveller freshly arrived by the train, and who by this time was beneath the pillars of the porch. Sir Sykes Denzil, for it was he whose carriage had just brought him in hot haste to the place where his son lay ill, started perceptibly and hesitated, then turned abruptly on his heel and disappeared within the hotel, greeted by the obsequious Mr and Mrs Biggles.
Recognition, as we can all avouch, is in the immense majority of cases simultaneous, one memory seeming as it were to take fire at the spark of recollection kindled in the other. In this instance such was not exactly what occurred. Yet the traveller with the bag was perfectly certain that he had seen before the tall gentleman who had started at the sight of him, and that a diligent searching of the mental archives would elicit the answer to the riddle.
‘Have I written or telegraphed to order rooms here?’ repeated the new arrival testily, after the flippant waiter who came, flourishing his napkin, to see what the stranger wanted. ‘No, I have not. And to judge by the size of your town, my friend, and the general look of affairs, I should say that on any other day of the year but this such a precaution would be wholly superfluous.’
The waiter, who had been slightly puffed up by the ephemeral vogue of Pebworth and its chief hotel, took the rebuke meekly. ‘Would you step into the coffee-room, sir?’ he said. ‘I’ll ask Mrs Biggles about accommodation likely to be vacant. Any name I could mention, sir?’
‘Name—yes, Wilkins,’ returned the traveller, pushing open the door of the coffee-room, in which, at various tables, some dozen of sporting-men were making a scrambling meal. One or two of these looking up from their plates, nodded a greeting, with a ‘How d’ ye do, Wilkins?’ or ‘How goes it, old fellow?’ salutations which the recipient of them returned in kind. Then the waiter bustled in to say, more respectfully than before, that so soon as No. 28 should be vacated by a gentleman leaving by the 6.25 train, it would be at the disposal of Mr Wilkins. Further, here was a note for Mr Wilkins; into whose hand he proceeded to thrust a half-sheet of letter-paper, roughly folded in four, and containing but some two or three lines of blotted handwriting. ‘If you will so far oblige me’—thus ran the words, shaky and blurred as to their caligraphy, but tolerably legible—‘I shall be glad of a few moments’ interview with you, at once if not inconvenient, in No. 11. I will not detain you.’
There was no signature, but no reasonable doubt could exist in the mind of Mr Wilkins as to the note having been penned by the owner of the carriage that had so lately driven up to the door of the De Vere Arms.
‘Why, this is taking the bull by the horns,’ said Mr Wilkins, as he rose to obey the summons.