Crofts flung open the studded portal, revealing emptiness in the corridor.
“Servants sometimes like to wait behind doors, just in case anyone should ring for ’em,” observed Salt. “You might keep an ear open in that direction, sir. Now, here’s the way of it.”
From what we heard in the next half-hour, what a change comes over the picture of Sir Brooke! I had heard of him as capricious, cantankerous, unsure-footed, gentle-hearted, weak-eyed, sick: the image of ineptitude. Yet what was he but the emissary of the powers behind the powers that be!—no fool at all, but the super-confidential spokesman of an Office powerful and discreet! I had heard of him as a guest like the others, save that he was to “propose the bride’s health.” Now we envisage him as coming to meet Cosgrove plenipotentially under the guise of the Bidding Feast! There had been earlier meetings here between these men. Indeed, while the revelation increased in scope, I began to wonder if the whole idea of the Feast was not shrewdly put upon Crofts by Cosgrove’s suggestion, so that there might be an out-of-the-way corner for the final tryst between the representatives of the United Kingdom and of the Kingdom of Ireland about to be reborn.
“It may relieve Lord Ludlow’s mind,” said Salt, “if I clear up his connection with the affair at once. That Bangor and Newcastle address, sir,” he went on, looking at me, “seemed to give you a turn the other day, but it was really rather enlightenin’, you know.”
“I must be very stupid—”
“Not a bit of it—only you should have studied your geography just a little more thorough. So should I, for that matter; I didn’t guess the connection either. You see, both those places are in Ireland.”
“Ireland!” came several gasps as one.
“Fact. Two little towns near Belfast, nearer twenty than thirty miles apart, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“What goes on in those places?” asked Aire. “I’ve been in Bangor, County Down. It has no industries to speak of.”
“Yes, in the main those are seasonable towns; both on the coast, I believe. But Lord Ludlow and the other principals have projected a tolerable business in the linen-weavin’ line to give employment to every inhabitant the winter through; so there’ll be flourishin’ manufactories in both a year or two from now. And that properly explains Lord Ludlow’s interest: day by day here he was tryin’ to find what was goin’ to happen to his pet lamb.”