A Butterfly on the Wheel Part 19

"It was after midnight before he had finished his supper?" Admaston said.

"When?" Ellerdine inquired.

"Last night," Admaston rapped out.

"d.i.c.ky?" Lady Attwill said. "Why, he didn't have _any_ supper last night."

"Not a bally mouthful," said Lord Ellerdine, shaking his head mournfully.

"Collingwood told me," Admaston remarked, "that you had just finished supper, well after midnight."

"Well, that was a whopper," said Lady Attwill.

"He didn't know," Ellerdine spluttered in.

"Oh! I thought not," Admaston said. "But you all stayed here last night."

At that moment the sun, which had been filling the room with radiance, had become obscured by a floating cloud. The place was informed by a momentary greyness. It was only early spring, after all, and summer with its perpetual radiance, its perpetual heat, its _air_ of summer, which will always make a room cheerful even when a thunderstorm approaches, had not yet arrived.

The room became as grey as the faces of the people who were in it, as grey and cold as the accusing voice which could not be silenced, which continued remorselessly. "But you all stayed here last night," Admaston repeated slowly, clearly, and with a definite, staccato voice.

Then there was an odd chiming of tone. The anxious musical contralto of Lady Attwill mingled with the more anxious, and definitely tremulous, bleat of the diplomatist.

"Oh yes. We were all here," they said together.

"But no supper?"

"No supper, George," Ellerdine said in a faint voice....

The door opened and Jacques of Ecclefechan entered.

He looked towards Lord Ellerdine. "Your man, my lord, to see you," he said in excellent Scotch-English.

A little wizened, elderly man with grey hair closely cropped to his head, and dressed in a decorous lounge suit of black, came drooping into the room.

His face was anxious, and at the same time pleased.

"I telephoned to Chalons, my lord," he said.

Lord Ellerdine jumped up as if he had suddenly sat down upon a pin.

"What?" he said.

"The railway people are sure they put your dispatch-box on the 2.43 with you and Lady Attwill."

Lord Ellerdine's face became the colour of brick. If his mouth had been larger it would have foamed at the corners. "Get out!" he spluttered.

The little man started back a step, his arms shot out in amazement, his face a mere mask of one.

"My lord!" he said.

"Get out!"

The poor fellow realised that there was obviously something very wrong.

It was a situation he could only deal with in one way, and that was by being thoroughly polite.

"Yes, my lord," he said, in a voice from which he vainly tried to eliminate the amazement he felt.

Admaston turned sharply to the peer.

"What, Ellerdine?" he said. "Has your dispatch-box got on the wrong train, too? What a chapter of accidents!"

Again there was a horrible silence in the place.

It was broken by a sudden, loud cry.

Peggy had entered from her room, and had seen them all standing there--like figures in a tableau in the big hall at Madame Tussaud's.

"George!" she cried.

At that moment there was a singular change of poise among the tense, strained people who were there.

Lady Attwill, radiant and beautiful, strolled up to the piano.

Admaston remained where he was. Collingwood bent forward, almost in the att.i.tude of a man about to spring.

"Well, Peggy. Going out?" Admaston asked.

"I was," Peggy answered; and if ever guilty fear was manifested in a human voice, the people in that room heard it now. It must be remembered that to people who have been upon the brink of crime or misbehaviour--even though they may have escaped it--the suspicion, when they are confronted with it, has much the same effect upon their att.i.tude as if the thing had already been done. The nerves of the innocent have often proclaimed them guilty to the most indulgent eyes.

"I was going out," Peggy faltered.

"Wait a moment," Admaston said.

Peggy almost drooped together.

She was like an early lily of the valley suddenly withered by a sharp, cold wind--and all gardeners will tell one how sudden and complete that withering and collapse can be.

"Very well," the girl answered.

Admaston raised his right hand a little, while he was looking at her, grave and straight. Then his arm dropped to his side.

"Ellerdine tells me that you all got on the wrong train at Boulogne."

"Yes," Peggy answered. She looked anxiously, and indeed piteously, at the others, wondering what they had been saying, longing to be adequate, conscious of her own innocence, but dreadfully conscious of the appearance of her guilt.

Admaston--and nothing escaped him--saw the way her look flickered round the salon.

"You did?" he said in a voice of doom.