The Elsingham Portrait

Twenty-One


Just about this time, on the London road not twenty miles from Elsinghurst Village, a luxurious vehicle was halted by the roadside. Lord John Elsingham’s coachman, impressed by his master’s request that he “put ‘em along,” had cut one turn rather narrow. Unfortunately the driver of the London Mail, who was aware that he was eleven minutes behind his time, was springing his own horseflesh, and swept around the same turn a shade wide. Quick reactions and superb skill on the part of both drivers had averted a crash, but Lord John’s coach had ended up with two wheels in the ditch. A worse thing was discovered when Lord John’s coachman and the groom clambered down to lead the horses out of the ditch. One of the magnificent animals had a bad sprain and would have to be led to the nearest inn.

Lord John took the check calmly, reassuring his servants and speaking gently to his cattle, but his friends exchanged worried glances. They had not sat in the coach with him for several hours without realizing that Lord John’s nerves were on the stretch. He had never been a moody or notional man, so his urgent desire to get to the Manor, and his sense of trouble approaching, impressed them more than they wished to admit. When the horses were unharnessed and led out of the ditch, the groom offered to mount one and ride back to the last inn they had passed to get a fresh team.

“Why don’t you let Olson lead the lame horse instead,” Lord Peter suggested. “It’s only a mile or so. We’ll wait here, Johnny, and you can ride ahead on a sound horse.”

“Are you mad?” interposed Randall. “He’s got no saddle, for one thing—”

“Do it, Johnny,” urged Lord Peter.

Troubled blue eyes met steady gray ones for a long moment.

“You feel it too?” asked Lord John.

“No,” admitted Lord Peter honestly, “but I feel you feeling it.”

Lord John laughed without mirth. “I’ll do it.”

When they had seen their friend off, Randall turned to Lord Peter. “Now perhaps you’ll have the kindness to explain what that was all about?”

Lord Peter frowned. “Johnny’s convinced that his wife is in immediate danger.”

Randall delivered himself of a series of colorful oaths, to which the coachman, standing by the carriage, listened with pleasure. Now that has some style to it, he thought, wishing his own master had a little of Mr. Towne’s fluency. A real education to listen to, was Mr. Towne.

Lord Peter was neither amused nor edified. “When you can control your mouth,” he said icily, “perhaps you will be good enough to explain what is annoying you.”

Randall stared at him incredulously. “ ‘Annoying’? You mean you don’t know? ‘I feel you feeling it,’ was, I believe, the phrase you used. I might have expected to hear a speech like that from my Great-aunt Dolcina, who is as mad as March hare, but from the lips of a man whose wits I had always rated as adequate, if not brilliant—!”

“Take a damper,” advised his friend. “There’s something devilish odd about this whole business—”

“Now there,” interrupted Randall cordially. “You cut close to the bone. I reject ‘annoying,’ and when you describe your ‘feelings’ my gorge rises, but I most heartily endorse both ‘devilish’ and ‘odd’—odd for you and Johnny, and devilish for Nadine.”

“That’s just it, you idiot. Johnny really believes she’s changed—and so do I.”

And while his friend glared at him open-mouthed, Lord Peter strolled over to engage the coachman in desultory conversation.