Two mornings after this discovery of the passage, as they were sitting at breakfast, a telegram was brought in for Harry.
"Brougham to meet the evening train," he said to the man, after reading it, "and tell them to get Mr. Francis\'s rooms ready."
"He comes to-night?" asked Geoffrey.
"Yes; I did not expect him so soon. But he is only coming for a couple of days, he says. He has taken the flat in Wimpole Street; I suppose he means to go back there."
"What is he coming here for?"
"Can\'t say—to get some furniture and things, I suspect. Then the passage is to be a secret, eh, Geoff?"
"Why, surely," said Geoffrey; "like a box hedge. I shouldn\'t take the slightest pleasure in it if I thought other people knew——"
"But you said you were sure that Uncle Francis did know," interrupted Harry.
"Let me finish my sentence, if you don\'t mind. I was about to say that I shouldn\'t take the slightest pleasure in it if I thought that other people knew that I knew."
[Pg 285]
Harry broke a piece of toast meditatively.
"I\'m not sure about it," he said. "Personally I felt rather aggrieved that Uncle Francis had not told me anything about it. Well, wouldn\'t he as naturally feel aggrieved if I don\'t tell him?"
"It is superfluous to tell him," said Geoffrey, "because he knows already. Secondly, it will spoil all my pleasure if he knows we know, and I shall wish I hadn\'t found the thing at all. Fifthly and lastly, you never paid me that twenty-six bob; and, thirdly, it is your house, after all."
Harry was silent. Then suddenly:
"Geoffrey," he said, "tell me what further proof you have, apart from the candle, that Uncle Francis does know about it. I\'ll draw you a cheque after breakfast; haven\'t got any money."
"Is that a bribe?" asked Geoffrey.
"Yes."
"And you really wish to know?"
"Yes, I ask you," said Harry. "No, it is not a bribe. If soberly you would rather not tell me, don\'t."
For a moment Geoffrey could not make up his mind whether he wished Harry to know or not. If only the tale would have put him on his guard, he would have had no hesitation about telling him all—his conversation with Lady Oxted, the looped cotton, the midnight visit. But he felt that the right time had not come, though it might come any day. On the other hand, it was difficult to speak merely of Mr. Francis\'s visit without betraying some hint of his suspicions, and[Pg 286] this he did not want to do. But the balance of advantage seemed to incline toward telling him; for if he did not, in answer to so direct an invitation, Harry would not unnaturally accuse him, though silently no doubt, of unfounded suspicions against a man whom he himself honoured very highly. So he determined to speak.
"Three nights ago," he said, "on the evening of the gun-room affair, you went to bed early, and I sat in the hall and dozed. I awoke suddenly and saw Mr. Francis\'s face looking round the corner by the staircase."
Harry pushed back his chair.
"What!" he said.
"Oh, I was not dozing then. We talked for some time, and he told me why he had come with this secrecy. He also asked me not to tell you. But I don\'t mind."
"And why had he come?" asked Harry.
"All day, he said, he had been haunted by a strong premonition of evil, and he had come to make sure you were safe."
"That\'s odd," said Harry. "On the day of the gun-room affair—well?"
"For one reason and another," continued Geoffrey, "I felt sure he had not come in by the front door. At any rate, I proved that he did not leave by it, for I put some stamp paper over the joining, and in the morning it was still untorn. And then, if you remember, I said I felt yew-hedgy, and found the passage."
[Pg 287]
Harry got up, and began pacing up and down the dining room.
"But how ridiculous!" he said. "Why couldn\'t he have told me? Was he ashamed of his premonition?"
"He told me he was."
Harry felt unreasonably annoyed.
"I won\'t have my house burglariously entered by anybody," he said, "Uncle Francis or another. I shall tell him so."
"As you will," said Geoffrey, inwardly anxious that he should not.
"Then I shall not tell him so," said Harry, "and I sha\'n\'t tell him that I know about the secret passage. But next time he tries to use it, he shall find no candle there. I\'ve a good mind to block the place up, Geoff."
"Oh, don\'t do that! \'Tisn\'t fair on me."
"I shall do exactly as I damn please!" said Harry. "We\'ll be finding it full of kitchen maids next. No, I can\'t block it up before I\'ve shown it Evie. But I shall go there every day and take away his candle if he puts fresh ones. Lord, I got quite heated about it!"
"That\'s right," said Geoffrey; "don\'t be sat upon by anybody."
"Anyhow you\'d better not try," said Harry viciously.
He continued quarter-decking about the room for a few times in silence, and his annoyance subsided.
"And the old fellow really came down because[Pg 288] he had a presentiment about me," he went on. "Geoff, that\'s an odd thing now. It looks as if the Luck touched more than me; it gave Uncle Francis a hint of what it was doing. You know the Luck\'s getting on; it is making more reasonable attempts on me. Do you think I\'ve been encouraging it too much? Perhaps I have; we won\'t drink its health to-night."
"I would if I were you," said Geoffrey. "Perhaps in that way you have put the old thing in a good temper. Well, keep it up; it can\'t avoid having shots at you, but it always manages to miss."
"Ah, you are beginning to believe in it too."
"Not a bit. All the effect the Luck has is to make you talk arrant nonsense about it. I believe in it, indeed! I was just humouring you."
"Your notions of the humorous are obscure," observed Harry.
Mr. Francis arrived late that night, full of little anecdotes about his house-hunting, and loud in praises of his flat. He had only come, as he had said, for a couple of days, to collect some books and sticks of furniture, and by the end of the month at the outside he hoped to have it completely habitable. His pleasure in it was that of a child with a new toy, delightful to hear, and they sat up late, listening to his fresh, cheerful talk, and hearkening between whiles to an extraordinary heavy rain which had come on before sunset and was beating at the windows.
This deluge was continuous all night, and next[Pg 289] morning they woke to the same streaming heavens; the sky was a lowering arch of deluge, the rain relentless. Harry and Geoffrey, who regarded the sky and the open heavens as the proper roof for man, and houses merely as a shelter for unusual inclemency, had felt not the smallest inclination to stir abroad, but Mr. Francis at lunch announced his intention of walking, rain or no rain.
"It doesn\'t hurt me," he said; "a brisk walk, whatever the weather. So neither of you will come?"
Harry looked out on to the soupy, splashing gravel.
"Geoff, shall we go for a swim?" he said.
"Thank you, no. I\'m too old for mud pies."
Mr. Francis laughed heartily.
"So am not I," he said.—"Well, Harry?"
"It certainly is raining," said the lad.
"Not a doubt of it," assented Mr. Francis.
Geoffrey turned to Harry suddenly.
"Fear both fire and frost and rain," he said, in a low tone.
Harry went briskly toward the door.
"Thanks, Geoff, that settles it," he said. "An excellent reason for going, and getting it over to-day if possible.—Yes, Uncle Francis, I\'ll put on my boots and come. I\'m not made of paper any more than you."
Geoffrey followed him into the hall, a sudden vague foreboding filling him.
"Don\'t go, Harry!" he said.
[Pg 290]
"You are beginning to believe in it, you know," said Harry.
"Indeed I am not."
"Looks like it," and Mr. Francis joining them, he went off whistling.
Very much rain must have fallen during the night, for yesterday the lake was not notably higher than its normal limits, whereas now, so few hours afterward, it had swollen so as to over-top the stonework of the sluice, and a steady rush of water fell over the ledge into the outlet below. This, ordinarily a smooth-flowing chalk stream, was now a riotous race of headlong water, sufficient to carry a man off his feet, and, as they paused a minute or two to watch the grand rush of it, they could see that, even in so short a space, the flow of water over the stonework was increasing in volume, showing that the lake was rising every minute. The gate walls of the sluice were not very thick, and seemed hardly built for such a press of water; in one or two places Mr. Francis observed that there appeared to be cracks right through them, for water spurted out as from a hose. The sluice itself seemed to have got somewhat choked with the débris of branches and leaves with which the storm had covered the surface of the lake, and a Saragossa Sea of drift stretched out to a considerable radius from it.
Adjoining the main lock was a small wooden water gate, designed, no doubt, for the relief in time of flood, but this was shut down, and Harry, splashing through the water, tried to pull it up,[Pg 291] in order to give an additional outlet, but the wood was swollen with the wet, and he could not stir it. Mr. Francis observed his actions with some attention; his feet were firmly planted on the stone slab that covered the sluice, and the water rose like a frill over his boots, as, with bent and straining figure, he exerted his utmost force to raise the gate. Once, as for firmer purchase he wedged his right foot against the side of the water channel and bowed to a final effort, the block of stonework on which he stood seemed to tremble. A cry of warning rose to Mr. Francis\'s lips, but it remained unuttered; only his face wore an expression of intense conflicting expectation. But Harry\'s efforts were fruitless, and soon desisting, he splashed his way back. Elsewhere the lake was rapidly encroaching on the outskirts of the lawn; pools of rain lay in the lower undulations of it, and these, joining with its swollen waters, formed long, liquid tongues and bays. Here a clump of bushes stood out like an island in a lagoon, here an outlying flower bed was altogether submerged, and the dark soil was floated by the water in a spreading stain over the adjoining grass.
"This will never do," said Harry; "the place will be in a mess for months if we don\'t get the water off somehow. It is that choked sluice which is doing all the mischief. We had better go up to the farm, Uncle Francis, and send some men to clear it. Lord, how it rains!"
"Yes, that will be the best plan," said he.[Pg 292] "Stay, Harry, I will go, and do you run back to the sluice, my dear fellow, and see if it is raised quite to the top; we never looked at that. You might get a big stick also, and begin clearing away the stuff that chokes it. And have another pull at the wooden gate. If you can get that open, it is all right. Go and break your back over it, my dear boy; it seemed to yield a little that last pull you gave. What muscles, what muscles!" he said, feeling his arm. "Try again at the wooden sluice, and be quick. There is no time to lose; we shall have the water up to the house in less than an hour if this goes on."
Mr. Francis went off at a rapid amble in the direction of the farm, and Harry returned to wrestle with the wooden sluice. Even in the few minutes that they had been away the water had risen beyond belief, and when again he splashed across the stone slab of the sluice to the smaller gate, the swift-flowing stream over the top of it was half knee-deep, and pressed against him like a strong man. It was no longer possible to see the spouting escape beneath, for the arch of turbid water was continuous and unbroken from side to side.
He wrapped his handkerchief round the ring which raised the gate, and again putting shoulder and straining back into it, bent to his task. One foot he had braced against the stone coping of the side, the other he pressed to the ironwork of the main sluice, and, pulling firmly and strongly till he felt the muscles of his spine stand out like[Pg 293] woven cords, he knew............