Juggernaut. Alice Campbell
up from his contemplation of the mustard-pot, and it seemed to Esther that his dull eyes met and held the young man's shallow hazel ones for an appreciable space of time.
"Well," he said at length, "do you particularly want to go?"
"Like hell," was the brief reply.
"H'm! In that case I should certainly leave the decision till the last possible moment. There's always some slight chance of something's turning up."
"No! Do you think there is, though?" demanded Holliday eagerly, stopping with the shaker in his hands.
"On general principles."
The visitor's face brightened noticeably. Whistling a bar or two of
"Gigolette" he poured out two glasses of a pale straw-coloured liquid,
then with the shaker poised over a third glass looked inquiringly at
Esther.
"What about you?" he invited.
Esther hesitated and succumbed to the temptation. After all, why not?
"As a resident of a dry country," she said, smiling, "I can't refuse."
He filled the glass and handed it to her just as Jacques entered, bearing the hot and savoury omelette aux champignons.
"Well!"—and Captain Holliday raised his glass and his left eyebrow simultaneously with easy nonchalance, "may we all get what we want!"
"Hear, hear," murmured the doctor mechanically, and drank his cocktail at a gulp.
Esther sipped hers, finding it a subtle and delicious concoction. Later she decided it was a potent one as well. Soon she observed that a hint of unwonted animation crept into the doctor's manner and indeed as the meal progressed he became almost gay, though how much of the change was due to the cocktail and how much to the company she could not tell. Moreover he ate steadily and voraciously. She thought she had never seen a man eat so much, it was like stoking an engine. Holliday, on the contrary, had little appetite for the excellent meal and seemed strung up with a kind of nervous excitement.
Afterwards this scene recurred to her more than once, showing to her imagination like a close-up on the screen. In the light of subsequent happenings it held for her a curious fascination. She could at any time shut her eyes and see the three of them, so ill-assorted, sitting around the table in that bourgeois dining-room, eating and conversing, herself one of the party by accident and virtually ignored by the other two, yet linked with them in a sort of casual camaraderie that was somehow established when she accepted the cocktail. Out of all that followed, no incident remained for her so sinister and at the same time so paradoxically trivial and absurd as this chance gathering at déjeuner.
CHAPTER VI
One bright afternoon about ten days after this the Rolls Royce of the Cliffords drew up at the doctor's door, and when the sandy-haired chauffeur had descended and rung the bell, there emerged from the car in somewhat ceremonial order Lady Clifford, her sister-in-law, and Sir Charles himself. To the casual eye it would appear that the first of these three could have no possible connection with the other two, any more than a bird of paradise would have with a pair of rooks.
"She has brought the old man with her this time," confided Jacques to Esther en passant, having admitted the trio to the salon. "He is a very bad colour, that man! I don't like his look."
Nor did Esther, when a moment later she opened the salon door and caught her first glimpse of Sir Charles, a gaunt, heavily built old man with sunken eyes, unnaturally bright, and a dry, yellowish skin tightly stretched across his prominent cheek bones. He sat leaning forward in his chair, wearing his heavy overcoat with the fur-lined collar drawn up about his thin neck and his big bony hands clasped so rigidly over the handle of his stick that the knuckles shone blanched and polished. He shivered slightly at the opening of the door.
"Here, Charlie, put on your cap," commanded his sister quickly. "This room is always creepy."
"Yes, do put it on," murmured Lady Clifford gently, taking a grey tweed cap from the table and trying to fit it on his head.
He brushed her aside with a petulant gesture.
"No, no, I don't want my hat on in the house. What do you take me for?"
The two women exchanged resigned glances, which patently said, "Well, if he won't, he won't." Miss Clifford sighed as if a little anxious, and the furrow between her brows deepened. She was strikingly like her brother, with the same heavy features, but she was a good ten years younger, and with her ruddy red-brown complexion and bright brown eyes under rather bushy brows had a look of alertness and vigour, as well as certain kindly simplicity which attracted Esther. She was dressed in good plain country clothes, and her felt hat fitted badly because of the thick coils of her hair, brown, streaked with grey.
"Will you come this way?" said Esther, holding open the consulting-room door.
The three filed past her, Sir Charles walking with a firm if inelastic tread. There was about him a look of obstinate, almost rude, determination; he had the air of coming here under protest. Miss Clifford looked at Esther with a certain interest.
"I have not seen you before. When did you come?"
"Only a few weeks ago."
"Ah, I see you're American. No, Canadian, is it? Well, it's pleasant having someone here who speaks English."
Dr. Sartorius had come forward with a more cordial manner than he usually displayed. He positively smiled as he took Miss Clifford's hand.
"Well, you're not looking very ill," he remarked in a tone almost jovial. "Don't try to tell me there's anything the matter with you. I'll refuse to believe it."
"Oh, heavens, no, I'm all right," laughed Miss Clifford agreeably.
"It's this tiresome brother of mine who's been bothering us a bit.
He's been feeling seedy for several days, haven't you, Charlie?"
Sir Charles shook his head, though whether in dissent or simply out of an ingrained desire to contradict was not apparent.
"Feeling seedy, has he? Well, and what seems to be the trouble?" inquired the doctor with that sort of purring patter which one can readily believe to be the first thing learned by a student of medicine. "Caught a slight chill, perhaps? The weather's been a bit tricky."
"Ah, I think it is that," put in the Frenchwoman eagerly. "That
Wednesday at the polo, Charles, when it came on to rain. … "
"Not a bit of it," denied her husband positively. "If it comes to that, I had all these feelings before I ever thought of going to the polo."
"I begged him to let me send for you, doctor, but you know what he is like," interpolated Miss Clifford. "He hates to admit he is ill."
"What sort of feelings?" blandly inquired the doctor.
Sir Charles thrust out his lower lip. He had planted himself in an armchair, while his wife remained standing a little behind him, her face, it seemed to Esther, full of anxiety.
"Oh, headaches, backaches. The back's the worst. Goes on steadily.
Had it for days."
"Sharp pain?"
"No, dull. Not like lumbago."
"He has no appetite," added his sister.
"Well, well, let's have a look at you."
The doctor drew a chair beside Sir Charles and reached for the gaunt brownish hand. At the same moment Lady Clifford made a little movement of solicitude, laying her gloved hand on the old man's shoulder.
"Are you quite comfortable