"You've got your head," he retorted, "full of nonsense, Lou. Try and be a sensible woman now, and think of it all quietly. Is there anything you would like me to do, for instance?"

"Yes, if you will."

"What is it?"

"Couldn't you see Uncle Ryder?"

"At Scotland Yard, you mean?"

"He is at the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, isn't he?"

"I've always understood so."

"Would he see you, do you think, at his office?"

"Tom not see me?" exclaimed Colonel Harris. "Of course he would. What do you want me to see him about?"

"He could tell you exactly how matters stood with regard to--to Luke, couldn't he?"

"He could. But would he?"

"You can but try."

"It's a great pity your aunt is out of town; you might have heard a good deal from her."

"Oh, Sir Thomas never tells aunt anything that's professional," said Louisa with a smile. "She'd be forever making muddles."

"I am sure she would," he a.s.sented with deep conviction.

"Do you think I might go with you?"

"What? To Tom's? I don't think he would like that, Lou: and it wouldn't quite do you know."

"Perhaps not," she agreed with hardly even a sigh of disappointment.

She was so accustomed, you see, to being thwarted by convention, whenever impulse carried her out of the bounds which the world had prescribed. Moreover, she expected to see Luke soon. He would be sure to come directly after an early visit to Grosvenor Square.

She helped her father on with his coat. She was almost satisfied that he should go alone. She would have an hour with Luke, if he came early, and it was necessary that she should have him to herself, before too many people had shouted evil and good news, congratulations, opprobrium, and suspicions at him.

Colonel Harris, she knew, would get quite as much if not more information out of his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Ryder, than he could do if she--a mere woman--happened to be present at the interview. Sir Thomas would trust Colonel Harris with professional matters which he never would confide to a woman, and Louisa trusted her father implicitly.

She knew that, despite the grumblings and crustiness peculiar to every Englishman, when he is troubled with domestic matters whilst sitting at his own breakfast table, her father had Luke's welfare just as much at heart as she had herself.

CHAPTER XIX

NOT ALL ABOUT IT

Colonel Harris sent in his card to Sir Thomas Ryder. He had driven over from the Langham in a hansom--holding taxicabs in even more whole-hearted abhorrence than before. He inquired at once if Sir Thomas was in his private sanctum, and if so whether he might see him.

Curiously enough the chief, usually quite inaccessible to the casual visitor--whether relative or stranger--received his brother-in-law immediately.

"h.e.l.lo, Will," he said by way of greeting, the way Englishmen have of saying that they are pleased to see one another.

"h.e.l.lo," responded Colonel Harris in the same eloquent tone.

And the two old boys shook hands.

Sir Thomas then resumed his official chair behind his huge desk and motioned his brother-in-law to an arm-chair close by.

"Have a cigar," said the host.

"Thanks," rejoined the other.

The box was handed across, a Havana selected.

The cigars were lighted, and for quite three minutes the two men smoked in silence. One of them had come here to find out how much of his daughter's happiness lay in jeopardy; the other knew what was in the balance, the danger to his niece's happiness, the terrible abyss of misery which yawned at her feet.

But both sat there and enjoyed their cigars. They were dressed with scrupulous care, in the uniform prescribed by the world in which they lived as being suitable for gentlemen of their position and of their age; frock coats and dark gray trousers, immaculate collar, and tie with pearl pin. Both wore a seal ring on the little finger of the left hand, and a watch chain of early Victorian design. They might be twins but for their faces. Convention had put a livery on them which they would on no account have discarded.

But the faces were very different. Colonel Harris carried his sixty years as easily as if they had been forty. There were not many lines on his round, chubby face, with its red cheeks, and round, child-like eyes. The heavy cavalry moustache, once auburn, now almost white, hid the expression of the mouth, but one felt, judging by the eyes and the smooth forehead, which continued very far now onto the back of his head, that if one were allowed a peep below that walrus-like face adornment one would see a mouth that was kind and none too firm, the mouth of a man who had led other men perhaps but who had invariably been led by his women folk.

Now Sir Thomas Ryder was--or rather is, for he is still in perfect health and full vigour--a very different type of man. You have no doubt seen him about town--for he takes a const.i.tutional in the park every day on his way to his work, and he goes to most first nights at the theatres--and if so you will have admired the keen, sharp face, the closely set eyes, the mobile mouth free from moustache or beard: the face is furrowed all over, especially round the eyes, yet he does not look old. That is because of the furrows; they form a wonderful net-work round his eyes, giving them an expression of perpetual keen amus.e.m.e.nt. The hair is pale in colour--not white but faded--and scanty. Sir Thomas wears it carefully brushed across the top of his head, with a parting on the left side.

He has a trick when he is thinking deeply of pa.s.sing his hand--which is white, slender and tapering--over that scanty covering of what, but for it, would be a bald cranium.

Some people said that Sir Thomas Ryder was a man without any sentiment; others that he was a slave to red tape; but no one denied the uncontrovertible fact that he was the right man in the right place.

He looked the part and always acted it, and fewer blunders had undoubtedly been committed in the detective department of the metropolitan police since Sir Thomas Ryder took the guiding reins in hand.

"I suppose," he said at last, "that you've come to see me about this de Mountford business."

"I have," replied Colonel Harris simply.

"Well, it's not a pleasant business."

"I know that. The papers are full of it, and it's all a confounded d.a.m.nable business, Tom, and that's all about it."

"Unfortunately it's not 'all about it,'" rejoined Sir Thomas dryly.

"That's what Louisa says. Women are so queer about things of that sort, and the papers are full of twaddle. She is anxious about Luke."

"I don't wonder."

"But it's all nonsense, isn't it?"

"What is?"