CHAPTER XIII

WHAT FLOCKART FORESAW

The following afternoon was glaring and breathless.  Gabrielle had taken Stokes, with May Spencer (a girl friend visiting her mother), and driven the “sixteen” over to Connachan with a message from her mother—­an invitation to Lady Murie and her party to luncheon and tennis on the following day.  It was three o’clock, the hour when silence is upon a summer house-party in the country.  Beneath the blazing sun Glencardine lay amid its rose-gardens, its cut beech-hedges, and its bowers of greenery.  The palpitating heat was terrible—­the hottest day that summer.

At the end of the long, handsome drawing-room, with its pale blue carpet and silk-covered furniture, Lady Heyburn was lolling lazily in her chair near the wide, bright steel grate, with her inseparable friend, James Flockart, standing before her.

The striped blinds outside the three long, open windows subdued the sun-glare, yet the very odour of the cut flowers in the room seemed oppressive, while without could be heard the busy hum of insect life.

The Baronet’s handsome wife looked cool and comfortable in her gown of white embroidered muslin, her head thrown back upon the silken cushion, and her eyes raised to those of the man, who was idly smoking a cigarette, at her side.

“The thing grows more and more inexplicable,” he was saying to her in a low, strained voice.  “All the inquiries I’ve caused to be made in London and in Paris have led to a negative result.”

“We shall only know the truth when we get a peep of those papers in Henry’s safe, my dear friend,” was the woman’s reply.

“And that’s a pretty difficult job.  You don’t know where the old fellow keeps the key?”

“I only wish I did.  Gabrielle knows, no doubt.”

“Then you ought to compel her to divulge,” he urged.  “Once we get hold of that key for half-an-hour, we could learn a lot.”

“A lot that would be useful to you, eh?” remarked the woman, with a meaning smile.

“And to you also,” he said.  “Couldn’t we somehow watch and see where he hides the safe-key?  He never has it upon him, you say.”

“It isn’t on his bunch.”

“Then he must have a hiding-place for it, or it may be on his watch-chain,” remarked the man decisively.  “Get rid of all the guests as quickly as you can, Winnie.  While they’re about there’s always a danger of eavesdroppers and of watchers.”

“I’ve already announced that I’m going up to Inverness next week, so within the next day or two our friends will all leave.”

“Good!  Then the ground will be cleared for action,” he remarked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips.  “What’s your decision regarding the girl?”

“The same as yours.”

“But she hates me, you know,” laughed the man in gray flannel.

“Yes; but she fears you at the same time, and with her you can do more by fear than by love.”