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He deferred to this feeling enough to nod dismissal to the clerk, and then, when he was again alone, slowly opened the message, and read it: "Newcastle-on-Tyne, September 12. Our friend died at Edinboro this morning. See you at hotel this evening. Kervick."
The telegram of the idiot Kervick would bring the police down upon him like a pack of beagles. The beliefs and surmises of the idiot Gafferson would furnish them with the key to everything. He would have his letter from Tavender to show to the detectives and the Government's smart lawyers would ferret out the rest.
A vaguely superstitious consciousness of being in the presence of Fate laid hold upon him. His great day of triumph had its blood-stain. A victim had been needful and to that end poor simple, silly old Tavender was a dead man. Thorpe could see him, an embarrassing cadaver eyed by strangers who did not know what to do with it, fatuous even in death. A sudden rage at Kervick flamed up.
"I have taken a great interest in General Kervick," he said, almost defiantly. "I am seeing to it that he has a comfortable income an income suitable to a gentleman of his position for the rest of his life." "He will be very glad of it," she remarked. "But I hoped that you would be glad of it too," he told her, bluntly. A curious sense of reliance upon his superiority in years had come to him.
And the big smoking-room where the leather cushions were so low and so soft, and the connection between the bells and the waiters was so efficient that was even better. Thorpe presently made an excuse for taking Kervick apart. "I brought this old jackass here for a purpose," he said in low, gravely mandatory tones. "He thinks he's got an appointment at 5:30 this afternoon but he's wrong.
And he and his wife had actually been talking of old Kervick at the moment! It was their disagreement over him which had prevented her explaining about the new head-gardener. There was an effect of the uncanny in all this. And what did Gafferson want? How much did he know?
The General had been twice to High Thorpe, and on each occasion had so prolonged his stay that, in retrospect, the period of his absence seemed inconsiderable. The master now, thinking upon it in this minute of silence, was conscious of having missed him greatly. He would not have been bored to the extremity of threatening to go to London, if Kervick had been here.
GENERAL KERVICK was by habit a punctual man, and Thorpe found him hovering, carefully gloved and fur-coated, in the neighbourhood of the luncheon-room when he arrived. It indeed still lacked a few minutes of the appointed hour when they thus met and went in together.
And then there's General Kervick, awfully well-connected old chap, they say, but I guess he needs all he can get. He's started wearing his fur-coat already. Well, that's my Board. I couldn't join it, of course, till after allotment that's because I'm the vendor, as they call it but that hasn't interfered at all with my running the whole show. The Board doesn't really count, you know.
General Kervick sipped daintily at his glass, and then gave an embarrassed little laugh. "But I can't form what you might call an opinion," he protested, apologetically, "till I understand a bit more clearly what it is you propose to yourself. You mustn't be annoyed if I return to that 'still harping on my daughter, you know. If I MUST ask the question is it your wish to marry her?"
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