I can’t, and that’s all there is to it,” was the blunt reply. “As to being annoyed, I am only annoyed when my time’s wasted. Take these gents down, Jim. Good afternoon!”
The door was slammed to and they shot downwards. Francis turned to the lift man.
“Do you know a Mr. Wilmore who comes here sometimes?” he asked.
“Not likely!” the man scoffed. “They’re comin’ and goin’ all the time from four o’clock in the afternoon till eleven at night. If I heard a name I shouldn’t remember it. This way out, gentlemen.”
Wilmore’s hand was in his pocket but the man turned deliberately away. They walked out into the street.
“For downright incivility,” the former observed, “commend me to the attendants of a young men’s gymnasium!”
Francis smiled.
“All the same, old fellow,” he said, “if you worry for another five minutes about Reggie, you’re an ass.”
At six o’clock that evening Francis turned his two-seater into a winding drive bordered with rhododendrons, and pulled up before the porch of a charming two-storied bungalow, covered with creepers, and with French-windows opening from every room onto the lawns. A man-servant who had heard the approach of the car was already standing in the porch. Sir Timothy, in white flannels and a panama hat, strolled across the lawn to greet his approaching guest.
“Excellently timed, my young friend,” he said. “You will have time for your first cocktail before you change. My daughter you know, of course. Lady Cynthia Milton I think you also know.”
Francis shook hands with the two girls who were lying under the cedar tree. Margaret Hilditch seemed to him more wonderful than ever in her white serge boating clothes. Lady Cynthia, who had apparently just arrived from some function in town, was still wearing muslin and a large hat.
“I am always afraid that Mr. Ledsam will have forgotten me,” she observed, as she gave him her hand. “The last time I met you was at the Old Bailey, when you had been cheating the gallows of a very respectable wife murderer. Poynings, I think his name was.”
“I remember it perfectly,” Francis assented. “We danced together that night, I remember, at your aunt’s, Mrs. Malcolm’s, and you were intensely curious to know how Poynings had spent his evening.”
“Lady Cynthia’s reminder is perhaps a little unfortunate,” Sir Timothy observed. “Mr. Ledsam is no longer the last hope of the enterprising criminal. He has turned over a new leaf. To secure the services of his silver tongue, you have to lay at his feet no longer the bags of gold from your ill-gotten gains but the white flower of the blameless life.”
“This is all in the worst possible taste,” Margaret Hilditch declared, in her cold, expressionless tone. “You might consider my feelings.”
Lady Cynthia only laughed.
“My dear Margaret,” she said, “if I thought that you had any, I should never believe that you were your father’s daughter. Here’s to them, anyway,” she added, accepting the cocktail from the tray which the butler had just brought out. “Mr. Ledsam, are you going to attach yourself to me, or has Margaret annexed you?”
“I have offered myself to Mrs. Hilditch,” Francis rejoined promptly, “but so far I have made no impression.”
“Try her with a punt and a concertina after dinner,” Lady Cynthia suggested. “After all, I came down here to better my acquaintance with my host. You flirted with me disgracefully when I was a debutante, and have never taken any notice of me since. I hate infidelity in a man. Sir Timothy, I shall devote myself to you. Can you play a concertina?”
“Where the higher forms of music are concerned,” he replied, “I have no technical ability. I should prefer to sit at your feet.”
“While I punt, I suppose?”
“There are backwaters,” he suggested.
Lady Cynthia sipped her cocktail appreciatively.
“I wonder how it is,” she observed, “that in these days, although we have become callous to everything else in life, cocktails and flirtations still attract us. You shall take me to a backwater after dinner, Sir Timothy. I shall wear my silver-grey and take an armful of those black cushions from the drawing-room. In that half light, there is no telling what success I may not achieve.”
Sir Timothy sighed.
“Alas!” he said, “before dinner is over you will probably have changed your mind.”
“Perhaps so,” she admitted, “but you must remember that Mr. Ledsam is my only alternative, and I am not at all sure that he likes me. I am not sufficiently Victorian for his taste.”
The dressing-bell rang. Sir Timothy passed his arm through Francis’.
“The sentimental side of my domain;” he said, “the others may show you. My rose garden across the stream has been very much admired. I am now going to give you a glimpse of The Walled House, an edifice the possession of which has made me more or less famous.”
He led the way through a little shrubbery, across a further strip of garden and through a door in a high wall, which he opened with a key attached to his watch-chain. They were in an open park now, studded with magnificent trees, in the further corner of which stood an imposing mansion, with a great domed roof in the centre, and broad stone terraces, one of which led down to the river. The house itself was an amazingly blended mixture of old and new, with great wings supported by pillars thrown out on either side. It seemed to have been built without regard to any definite period of architecture, and yet to have attained a certain coherency—a far-reaching structure, with long lines of outbuildings. In the park itself were a score or more of horses, and in the distance beyond a long line of loose boxes with open doors. Even as they stood there, a grey sorrel mare had trotted up to their side and laid her head against Sir Timothy’s shoulder. He caressed her surreptitiously, affecting not to notice the approach of other animals from all quarters.
“Let me introduce you to The Walled House,” its owner observed, “so called, I imagine, because this wall, which is a great deal older than you or I, completely encloses the estate. Of course, you remember the old house, The Walled Palace, they called it? It belonged for many years to the Lynton family, and afterwards to the Crown.”
“I remember reading of your purchase,” Francis said, “and of course I remember the old mansion. You seem to have wiped it out pretty effectually.”
“I was obliged to play the vandal,” his host confessed. “In its previous state, the house was picturesque but uninhabitable. As you see it now, it is an exact reproduction of the country home of one of the lesser known of the Borgias—Sodina, I believe the lady’s name was. You will find inside some beautiful arches, and a sense of space which all modern houses lack. It cost me a great deal of money, and it is inhabited, when I am in Europe, about once a fortnight. You know the river name for it? ‘Timothy’s Folly!”’
“But what on earth made you build it, so long as you don’t care to live there?” Francis enquired.
Sir Timothy smiled reflectively.
“Well,” he explained, “I like sometimes to entertain, and
