“Certainly, Aylward, certainly.  But can’t you get rid of that beastly image?”

“Not on any account, Haswell, even if it haunts us all day.  Here it shall stop until the Saharas are floated on Monday, if I have to lock it in the strongroom and throw the keys into the Thames.  Afterwards Vernon can take it, as he has a right to do, and I am sure that with it will go our luck.”

“Then the sooner our luck goes, the better,” replied Haswell, with a mere ghost of his former whistle.  “Life is better than luck, and—­Aylward, that Yellow God you are so fond of means to murder us.  We are being fatted for the sacrifice, that is all.  I remember now, that was one of the things I saw written in its eyes!”

CHAPTER III

JEEKIE TELLS A TALE

The Court, Mr. Champers-Haswell’s place, was a very fine house indeed, of a sort.  That is, it contained twenty-nine bedrooms, each of them with a bathroom attached, a large number of sitting-rooms, ample garages, stables, and offices, the whole surrounded by several acres of newly-planted gardens.  Incidentally it may be mentioned that it was built in the most atrocious taste and looked like a suburban villa seen through a magnifying glass.

It was in this matter of taste that it differed from Sir Robert Aylward’s home, Old Hall, a few miles away.  Not that this was old either, for the original house had fallen down or been burnt a hundred years before.  But Sir Robert, being gifted with artistic perception, had reared up in place of it a smaller but really beautiful dwelling of soft grey stone, long and low, and built in the Tudor style with many gables.

This house, charming as it was, could not of course compare with Yarleys, the ancient seat of the Vernons in the same neighbourhood.  Yarleys was pure Elizabethan, although it contained an oak-roofed hall which was said to date back to the time of King John, a remnant of a former house.  There was no electric light or other modern convenience at Yarleys, yet it was a place that everyone went to see because of its exceeding beauty and its historical associations.  The moat by which it was surrounded, the grass court within, for it was built on three sides of a square, the mullioned windows, the towered gateway of red brick, the low-panelled rooms hung with the portraits of departed Vernons, the sloping park and the splendid oaks that stood about, singly or in groups, were all of them perfect in their way.  It was one of the most lovely of English homes, and oddly enough its neglected gardens and the air of decay that pervaded it, added to rather than decreased its charm.