“Why, yes, with my friend Crofts’ cane.” He turned to our host. “But I assure you I did not harm the cane.”
“The cane be hanged,” responded Crofts. “But why in thunder did you do it?”
An expression vanished from Maryvale’s eyes almost before it deepened there, a softness, a look of meekness, a chastened look; I thought it a revelation of painful things kept subdued.
“Something suggested to me that there might be a secret passage in one of the walls of the corridor. I was trying, high up—”
Our host made a disgusted sound. “One thing you may depend upon, Gilbert, no matter what happens. In this extant portion of the castle there are no secret passages. There’s not so much as a priest’s hole or a trap-door or a double wall to a cupboard. There’s one bogie laid, anyhow. You may as well know that you made fools of us in there. Where the devil did you go afterward?”
“I’m sorry if I annoyed you. I just went back into the Hall of the Moth. But Doctor Aire—I didn’t care for the hobby of Doctor Aire. So I returned again to hear if there was anything about Sir Brooke.”
The servants, of course, had clustered around the door with quite natural and honourable inquisitiveness. Pendleton turned on them.
“You may go—and mind, don’t talk about this all afternoon. The subject is closed.” Ah, trustful Crofts!
So out of the dining-hall they filed to their aloof world of below-stairs: Ruth and Rosa Clay of lustrous person, Ardelia Lacy (giving the Welsh stableman a look in passing that was obviously a piece of her mind, though its crushing significance was hardly clear from the evidence), the maids, Jael, Em, and Harmony. Morgan and his fellow stablemen, Tenney and Wheeler, got out next, and the tall keeper gravely followed them behind the screen. Soames and Blenkinson both had hard work getting rid of old Finlay, who seemed to think that the occasion demanded more of his japes, and who finally thrust his head out from behind the screen for one last comprehensive wink at me.
Pendleton turned to the boy, who had set about his somewhat unorthodox task of clearing the dessert dishes.