The Search Party. George A. Birmingham
and drove the cork home into its neck with a blow of his fist. Patsy looked regretfully at it, but he was a man of self-respect. He would neither ask for, nor hint that he wanted, a drink which his host did not seem inclined to offer him freely. He realized what the decisive blow given to the cork meant. There would be no more whisky for him unless he chose to go out to the bar and pay for it there in the usual way. This he was unwilling to do. Later on in the month, when the collection for the sports was complete, he might be in a position to spend lavishly; but for the present he felt it necessary to economize.
“It’ll be off with me,” he said. “It’ll be best, seeing I have to be up at the Castle early to-morrow. Later on in the day I might be going over to Rosivera to see what’s to be got out of the man that’s there. If he’s as rich as you’re after telling me he’ll never miss a pound, or for the matter of that five pound. I’ll have a try at him anyway.”
CHAPTER VI
“Is there any news of the doctor?” asked Lord Manton.
He was standing on the steps outside the door of Clonmore Castle. He had just given Patsy Devlin a sovereign for the Horse Races and Athletic Sports, and was endeavouring to cut short the thanks with which the subscription was received.
“There is not, your lordship, devil the word; and why would there? It could be that he’s on the sea by this time, and, anyway, why would he be wanting to tell us where he is? Isn’t it enough of their persecuting he had without going out of his way to ask for more?”
Lord Manton, like everybody else, regarded Dr. O’Grady’s flight to America as the natural result of his financial embarrassment. He was sorry; but he recognized that the doctor had taken the wisest course.
“Might I be speaking a word to your lordship about the doctor?”
“Certainly, Patsy.”
“It’s what Jimmy O’Loughlin was saying to me that there’d be no need, if your lordship was agreeable to the same, to be telling the young lady the way the doctor is gone off and left her without a word. She has trouble enough, the creature, without that.”
“What young lady?”
“Be damn!” said Patsy hurriedly, “if there isn’t herself coming up the avenue. It wouldn’t do for her to see me talking to your lordship. I’d better be going before she’s on top of us.”
Patsy Devlin slipped round the corner of the Castle, and dodging through a plantation of laurels, made his way to the stable-yard. Lord Manton was left to watch the approach of Miss Blow, without any very clear idea of what she was likely to want of him; or how Jimmy O’Loughlin and Patsy Devlin expected to keep the doctor’s flight a secret from her. He observed with pleasure that she was more than commonly good-looking, that she carried herself well, and wore clothes which set off a fine figure. He had heard from Dr. O’Grady of the daughter of the Leeds tobacconist, and had formed a mental picture of her which in no way corresponded to the young lady who approached him. He reflected that she was probably in deep distress, and he looked forward with some pleasure to an interview in the course of which she was almost certain to cry. He had no objection to playing the part of comforter to a charming girl. His face expressed fatherly benignity when Miss Blow reached him.
“Am I addressing Lord Manton?” she asked.
“Certainly. Is there anything I can do for you?”
He almost added the words “my dear,” but there was a look in Miss Blow’s fine eyes which checked him. He decided that paternal affection would come in more appropriately after she began to cry.
“I am Miss Blow,” she said.
“Come in,” said Lord Manton, “come in. You must be tired after your walk. Let me lead the way into the library. I have often heard of you from my friend Dr. O’Grady, and if there is anything I can do to help you I shall be most happy to do it.”
He set Miss Blow in a deep chair near the window, pulled over another chair for himself, and sat down beside her.
“I am entirely at your service,” he said. “It will be a pleasure to me to give any help in my power to a charming young lady. I——”
Miss Blow’s eyes warned him again. There was a hard glitter in them very little suggestive of tears. He stopped abruptly.
“I understand that you are a magistrate,” she said.
Lord Manton bowed. Then he sat up straight in his chair and tried to express in his attitude a proper judicial solemnity.
“I want,” said Miss Blow, “to have Dr. O’Grady found at once.”
“A very natural and a very proper wish,” said Lord Manton. “I am in entire sympathy with you. I should like very much to find Dr. O’Grady. But——”
“Dead or alive,” said Miss Blow firmly.
“My dear Miss Blow!” The “my dear” came quite naturally to his lips this time. The words expressed sheer astonishment. There was no suggestion of affection, paternal or other, in the way he uttered them.
“Dead or alive,” said Miss Blow again.
“Don’t make such horrible suggestions, Miss Blow. I assure you there’s not the slightest reason for supposing that Dr. O’Grady is anything but alive and well.”
“Then where is he?” Miss Blow spoke sharply, incisively. Lord Manton began to think that she must be some new kind of girl, quite outside of his experience, one who felt more indignation than sorrow at the loss of her lover.
“I understand,” he said, “that he is absent from home, temporarily absent. I have no doubt——”
Miss Blow rose from her chair and took up her umbrella.
“You’re like all the rest,” she said. “You are as bad as the hotel-keeper and his friend. You are simply trying to put me off with lies. Good morning.”
“Wait a moment. Please do not hurry away. I am not like all the rest, really. I assure you I’m,—compared to Patsy Devlin, for instance,—I’m a miserably inefficient liar. Please sit down again.”
Miss Blow allowed herself to be persuaded.
“Tell me the truth,” she said; “and then find his body.”
“The truth,” said Lord Manton, “is painful—very painful. But it’s not so bad as that. Dr. O’Grady has been for some time past in a position of considerable pecuniary embarrassment.”
“He was up to his neck in debt,” said Miss Blow bluntly. “I know that. That’s what brought me here. And now I find he’s gone.”
There was just a hint of a break in her voice as she spoke the last words. Lord Manton thought that tears were at last imminent. He felt more at his ease, and ventured to take her hand in his and to stroke it gently. She snatched it from him.
“You’re worse than the others,” she said. “How dare you?”
For a moment Lord Manton thought that she was going to box his ears. He drew away from her hurriedly and attempted an apology.
“I am sincerely sorry,” he said. “For the moment I forgot that you were not my daughter. She always came to me with her troubles ever since she was quite a child. I got into the way of taking her hand——”
“Never mind about my hand. Tell me the truth about Dr. O’Grady.”
Lord Manton saw that she was mollified. To be mistaken for the daughter of an earl is a soothing thing under any circumstances. He thought for an instant of trying to repossess himself of her hand; but Miss Blow’s eyes, though no longer passionate, were steely. He felt himself aggrieved, and spoke with brutal