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Updated: June 2, 2025
Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more obese than when Hillyard had last seen him, was sitting by a bridge table overlooking the players. He never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the game, but he took a curious pleasure in looking on, and would sit in the card-room by the hour engrossed in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard, however, plucked him out of his occupation.
He had done his best, but since Luttrell would talk the question over with Stella Croyle, shoulder to shoulder with her amongst the lights and music, the perfume of her hair in his nostrils and the pleading of her eyes within his sight he, Charles Hardiman, might as well have held his tongue. So very likely it would have been.
Certainly Joan knew him! He was sitting next to her on the night when "The Dark Tower" was produced, sitting next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles Hardiman had used some phrase to describe that conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public place. Yes, that was the sentence.
"That one?" said Hardiman, and all the raillery faded from his face. "That is Mrs. Croyle. You will meet her to-night at my supper party." He hesitated as to what further he should say. "You might do worse than be a friend to her. She is not, I am afraid, very happy." Hillyard was surprised at the sudden gentleness of his companion's voice, and looked quickly towards him.
Sir Charles rattled on through the interval all good nature with just a slice of lemon and it had happened that he had pointed out one who was to be the instrument of great trouble for Hillyard and a few others, with whom this story is concerned. Hillyard interrupted Hardiman. "Who is the girl at the end of the sixth row, who seems to have stepped down from a china group on a mantelpiece?"
He was seated in front of the writing-desk, a young man, as the world went before the war, a few months short of twenty-eight. "The launch is waiting and everybody's on deck," continued Hardiman. "We shall lose our table at Hasselbacken if we don't get off." Then he caught sight of a telegram lying upon the writing-table. "Oh!" and the impatience died out of his voice. "Is anything the matter?"
Even now I come, already bored, to the barrack square and watch the time to see if I can't catch an earlier train from Gravesend to London." "And when you do?" asked Hardiman. Luttrell nodded. "When I do," he agreed, "I get no thrill out of my escape, I assure you. I hate myself a little more that's all." "Yes," said Hardiman. He was too wise a man to ask questions.
"I should have separated them," Hardiman reflected uneasily as he raised and drank his cocktail. "But how the deuce could I without making everybody stare? This party wasn't got up to separate people. All the same " The hushed wonder of a summer night. The gaiety of a bright thronged restaurant! In either setting Stella Croyle was a formidable antagonist.
I did not stab him. That is a mistake." "Do you know that your cabin companion says you did not leave your bunk at all that night?" said Quarles. "That must be another mistake," was the answer. When he had gone the professor remarked that John Bennett was far nearer an asylum than a prison. "If Hardiman had been shot I should think the servant had shot him, but he was not shot.
For Luttrell was there in the cabin in front of him, but sunk in so deep a contemplation of memories and prospects that the cabin might just as well have been empty. Sir Charles Hardiman touched him on the shoulder. "Wake up, old man!" "That's what I am doing waking up," said Luttrell, turning without any start.
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