Scandal at High Chimneys Read Free Page A

Damon’s appearance.
    Victor had said his father seemed to have aged ten years in the past three or four months, and that he had hardly left High Chimneys during that time. Even so, Clive was not prepared for that change.
    Matthew Damon, looking round uncertainly with one hand in the bosom of his frock coat, stood by the footboard of a first-class carriage with an open compartment-door behind him. Clive’s first impulse was to turn and bolt. But he was within two yards of the other man; those sunken eyes had seen him.
    “Mr. Strickland!”
    Clive’s head ached with all the drinking he had done the night before.
    “Good afternoon, sir,” he said.
    Matthew Damon, at forty-eight, was still formidable. He wore all his old air of sombre power and authority; the deep voice was like a drum. He had been a handsome man and remained so. Though he had a somewhat old-fashioned appearance, wearing a hat of beaverskin rather than silk and a shawl round his shoulders, his clothes and linen were of the finest quality. But his cheeks had sunken badly between thick black side-whiskers turning grey-white; and the eyes seemed to have retreated into his head.
    “Mr. Strickland,” he repeated, and groped. “You—you travel by this train? Ah, yes. So do we. To what fortunate circumstance do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
    “I imagine, sir, you did not receive my telegram?”
    “Your telegram?”
    “Yes, sir. I took the liberty of inviting myself to High Chimneys. It was a piece of insufferable impertinence, I’m afraid.”
    “Not at all. Not at all, I assure you! You are always welcome, young man, though I—I believe that for years I have not seen you except in London.”
    Then Matthew Damon pulled himself together, clenching the hand inside his coat. He spoke with sincerity, with a kind of awkward charm which was the other side of his nature.
    “Indeed, you may be of great assistance to us in solving a troublesome and unpleasant mystery,” he added, turning to the door behind him. “Is it not so, my dear?”
    A pretty lady with auburn hair, standing in the open doorway of the compartment with her maid hovering behind her, made a grimace and cast up her eyes.
    “Mr. Damon, for pity’s sake!”
    “Is it not so, madam?”
    Before that quiet violence the pretty lady subsided. But her wifely meekness carried other hints, like her broad if subdued charms.
    “Hortense, pray do stop fussing!” she said to her maid. “And I believe, Mr. Strickland, that you and I met some while ago at Lady Tedworth’s? I do hope you will join us in this compartment. We have it to ourselves, as you see, unless some horrid stranger should force his way in at the last moment.”
    And Georgette Damon, auburn hair brushed up into short curls at the back of a flat oval hat, glanced at Clive under her lowered eyelashes.
    It was a perfunctory glance, a discreet glance. Yet in some extraordinary way it was as though she had pressed herself physically against him. It conveyed, embarrassingly, a sense of what lay under her dark-green Zouave jacket with its tight-fitting green-silk blouse. Her crinoline, grey-coloured and straight in front, stretched back in a balloon-like triangle according to the latest mode.
    Damn the woman!
    Clive Strickland felt his thoughts moving in a direction they shouldn’t have moved, and he cursed himself too.
    “My ticket-number is for a different carriage, Mrs. Damon, but I shall be honoured to join you. Do—do Miss Kate and Miss Celia accompany you?”
    “No, no!” said Mr. Damon. “Kate and Celia are not with us; they are good girls,” he added rather inexplicably. “My wife and I left Reading by a very early train; we have been in town only a few hours. You spoke of a telegram, young man?”
    “Yes, sir. Victor was to have left one with the hall-porter at Bryce’s Club last night, but I telegraphed first thing this morning.”
    Smoke and smudges drifted about them. Georgette Damon left off looking at Clive,