“That’s the first rational thing you’ve said since yesterday,” said Allyne. “Go, by all means, old man, and make it brandy and soda.”
“Back in a moment,” answered Fair, disappearing.
“Honestly, Travers, what do you make of it?” asked Allyne when they were alone. “If it’s a joke he has carried it rather far. What is it?”
“Oh, Lord, I don’t know,” replied Travers wearily and with very genuine anxiety. “If it were any other man—but Fair is the coolest and sanest devil I ever knew. I don’t like this turn of affairs on my word. Money and women are the only two things that could bowl a chap over on his beam ends in this way, and Fair can show a clean slate under both of those heads—so I give it up. But I, for one, go no further.”
“Unless I am mistaken, his father or grandfather was mad,” whispered Allyne, pursing up his lips uncomfortingly; “but I never thought Maxwell dippy—that is, you know, not unusually so. He is devilish queer.”
“In England,” answered Travers, with a sneer, “everyone is thought mad who manifests any trace of originality. In the city they think Fair a bit off his head because he does everything that sacred British methods decry—and grows rich at it. And in society they think him singular because he has such a childish way of telling the truth. You and I know that he makes friends in society just as he makes money in the city. No, I don’t think Fair is mad—I wish to heaven I could think so.”
Allyne was striding up and down the room by this time, and when he next reached Travers he stopped and said: “Confound it, Travers, he can’t have done anything so rum as all this melodramatic rot would make one think. Give him credit for too good taste for that, at least.”
“Oh, never fear,” replied Travers, rising; “I’ve made up my mind. I’ll give him half an hour more. If he does not chuck this mystery and give us the key in plain English, I’ll report the case to his solicitor and medical man.”
“Here, too,” grunted Allyne, with a nervous shrug of his shoulders. “What a creepy, deuced idiotic thing to bring us up here tonight! The house feels like a tomb! By George, I wouldn’t stop here alone for the world. Did you see that man across the way when we came in? He watched us as if we were a gang of coiners. Lord! If they were to— What was that?”
Travers, also, had heard the noise, whatever it was, and both men turned nervously toward the door and listened. It was repeated, but faintly.