“That ruin up the Vale?”
“No, I mean the castle this house is remnant of. That other—up the Vale—that was the Kays’ too.”
“And the head of the cat?”
He shrugged. “You ought to know more of these things than I, you gravedigger. It’s part of their coat-of-arms. Look.”
I had already taken in the entire fireplace. It was in harmony with the grey walls. The over-mantel, like the interior of the unlit chimney-place itself, was composed of large stone blocks, very ancient, and the beam on which the names were cut formed a canopy from which it receded to the summit of the lofty chamber. The half-obliterate vestiges of what must have been a cross were visible in the centre of this curtain of rock, and on either side a shield with unrecognizable blurs for quarters. Only where Pendleton pointed I could see what might have been a feline profile.
As my host remarked, the subject of bearings lay more aptly in my special province than in his (which was, I remember, the excellence of sodium and its compounds). I was about to launch into a necessarily brief statement of what this device might signify, when Blenkinson entered and murmured something inaudible to his master.
“People at New Aidenn,” remarked Pendleton with slight ellipsis. “Be back at once.” This last was a promise, not an imperative.
He followed the servant out, and my exegesis was, as it happened, for ever postponed. Gilbert Maryvale, whose partner, Oxford, had made the declaration, seeing me solitary, rose from his chair with the peculiar lightness that was so unexpected and came to my side.
He looked at me with inquiry in his very dark eyes while he settled himself against the over-mantel. “Word from Sir Brooke?”
“I believe Pendleton’s gone to ’phone the station-master at New Aidenn. We’ll know, doubtless, in a minute or two.”