The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

feet into slippers and held out his arms for a dressing-gown.

“Find out where the nearest bathroom is, Parkins,” he ordered, “and prepare it. I have quite forgotten my way about here.”

“Very good, sir.”

The man was motionless for a moment, staring at the blood on his master’s pyjamas. Dominey glanced down at it and turned the dressing-gown up to his throat.

“I had a slight accident this morning,” he remarked carelessly. “Any ghost alarms last light?”

“None that I heard of, sir,” the man replied. “I am afraid we should have difficulty in keeping the young women from London, if they heard what I heard the night of my arrival.”

“Very terrible, was it?” Dominey asked with a smile.

Parkins’ expression remained immovable. There was in his tone, however, a mute protest against his master’s levity.

“The cries were the most terrible I have ever heard, sir,” he said. “I am not a nervous person, but I found them most disturbing.”

“Human or animal?”

“A mixture of both, I should say, sir.”

“You should camp out for the night on the skirts of an African forest,” Dominey remarked. “There you get a whole orchestra of wild animals, every one of them trying to freeze your blood up.”

“I was out in South Africa during the Boer War, sir,” Parkins replied, “and I went big game hunting with my master afterwards. I do not think that any animal was ever born in Africa with so terrifying a cry as we heard the night before last.”

“We must look into the matter,” Dominey muttered.

“I have already prepared a bath, sir, at the end of the corridor,” the man announced. “If you will allow me, I will show you the way.”

Dominey, when he descended about an hour later, found his guest awaiting him in the smaller dining-room, which looked out eastwards towards the sea, a lofty apartment with great windows and with an air of faded splendour which came from the ill-cared-for tapestries, hanging in places from the wall. Mr. Mangan had, contrary to his expectations, slept well and was in excellent spirits. The row of silver dishes upon the sideboard inspired him with an added cheerfulness.

“So there were no ghosts walking last night?” he remarked, as he took his place at the table. “Wonderful thing this absolute quiet is after London. Give you my word, I never heard a sound from the moment my head touched the pillow until I woke a short while ago.”

Dominey returned from the sideboard, carrying also a well-filled plate.

“I had a pretty useful night’s rest myself,” he observed.

Mangan raised his eyeglass and gazed at his host’s throat.

“Cut yourself?” he queried.

“Razor slipped,” Dominey told him. “You get out of the use of those things in Africa.”

“You’ve managed to give yourself a nasty gash,” Mr. Mangan observed curiously.

“Parkins is going to send up for a new set of safety razors for me,” Dominey announced. “About our plans for the day⁠—I’ve ordered the car for two-thirty this afternoon, if that suits you. We can look around the place quietly this morning. Mr. Johnson is sleeping over at a farmhouse near here. We shall pick him up en route. And I have told Lees, the bailiff, to come with us too.”

Mr. Mangan nodded his approval.

“Upon my word,” he confessed, “it will be a joy to me to go and see some of these fellows without having to put ’em off about repairs and that sort of thing. Johnson has had the worst of it, poor chap, but there are one or two of them took it into their heads to come up to London and worry me at the office.”

“I intend that there shall be no more dissatisfaction amongst my tenants.”

Mr. Mangan set off for another prowl towards the sideboard.

“Satisfied tenants you never will get in Norfolk,” he declared. “I must admit, though, that some of them have had cause to grumble lately. There’s a fellow round by Wells who farms nearly eight hundred acres⁠—”

He broke off in his speech. There was a knock at the door, not an ordinary knock at all, but a measured, deliberate tapping, three times repeated.

“Come in,” Dominey called out.

Mrs. Unthank entered, severer, more unattractive than ever in the hard morning light. She came to the end of the table, facing the place where Dominey was seated.

“Good morning, Mrs. Unthank,” he said.

She ignored the greeting.

“I am the bearer of a message,” she announced.

“Pray deliver it,” Dominey replied.

“Her ladyship would be glad for you to visit her in her apartment at once.”

Dominey leaned back in his chair. His eyes were fixed upon the face of the woman whose antagonism to himself was so apparent. She stood in the path of a long gleam of morning sunlight. The wrinkles in her face, her hard mouth, her cold, steely eyes were all clearly revealed.

“I am not at all sure,” he said, with a purpose in the words, “that any further meeting between Lady Dominey and myself is at present desirable.”

If he had thought to disturb this messenger by his suggestion, he was disappointed.

“Her ladyship desires me to assure you,” she added, with a note of contempt in her tone, “that you need be under no apprehension.”

Dominey admitted defeat and poured himself out some more coffee. Neither of the two noticed that his fingers were trembling.

“Her ladyship is very considerate,” he said. “Kindly say that I shall follow you in a few minutes.”

Dominey, following within a very few minutes of his summons, was ushered into an apartment large and sombrely elegant, an apartment of faded white and gold walls, of chandeliers glittering with lustres, of Louise Quinze furniture, shabby but priceless. To his surprise, although he scarcely noticed it at the time, Mrs. Unthank promptly disappeared. He was from the first left alone with the woman whom he had come to visit.

She was sitting up on her couch and watching his approach. A woman? Surely only a child, with pale cheeks, large, anxious eyes, and masses of brown hair brushed back from her forehead. After all, was he indeed a strong man, vowed to great things? There was a