I smiled within myself, for I knew the character of the personal friends of “The Golden Face.”
Yet to my surprise, when Thursday came I found assembled half a dozen perfectly honest and respectable men and their wives, and in some cases their daughters. One was a London barrister, another a well-known member of Parliament, a third a rich Leeds manufacturer, while the others were more or less well known, and certainly all of the highest respectability. When Rayne gave a house-party he always did the thing well, and the days passed in a round of well-ordered enjoyment, motoring, golf, tennis and visits to neighbors to the full delight of everyone. In the evening there were dancing and billiards, Duperré being the life and soul of the smart party.
On the fourth day, about twelve o’clock, Lola, who had made friends with Enid Claverton, the barrister’s daughter, who was about the same age as herself, came to me in the garage, and said:
“Mr. Lloyd, whom we met at Keswick, has just arrived. He’s come on a visit. Father told me nothing about it. Did he tell you?”
“Not a word,” I replied, wondering why the person in question had been enticed into the spider’s parlor. No doubt the highly respectable house-party had been invited to form a suitable setting for some secret villainy.
I met the new guest just before luncheon and found him a white-bearded, bald-headed, fresh-complexioned and rather dapper little man, whose merry eyes and easy-going manner marked him as a bon vivant and something after Rayne’s own style.
He greeted me when in the big hall with its long armorial windows, its old family portraits, and the many trophies of the chase that had been secured by the noble family who were previous owners of the Hall. Rayne introduced me as his secretary.
I looked into the smartly dressed old fellow’s blue eyes and wondered what foul plot against him had emanated from the abnormal brain of the arch-criminal who was his host. I smiled when I reflected on the horror of those guests did they but know who Rudolph Rayne really was. But in their ignorance they enjoyed his unbounded hospitality and voted him a real good sort—as outwardly he was.
My time was occupied mostly in driving the Rolls, but when at home I watched narrowly yet was utterly unable to discern why the friendship of Mr. Gordon Lloyd, whose profession or status I failed to discover, had been so cleverly secured and carefully cultivated until he had now become a welcome guest under Rayne’s roof.
There was a sinister design somewhere, but in what direction? Rudolph Rayne never lifted a finger or smiled upon a stranger without some evil intent by which to enrich himself. Usurers in the City have always been clever people backed by capital, but this super-crook had, I learned, risen in a few years from a small bookmaker in Balham to control the biggest combine of Thiefdom ever known in the annals of our time.