A very charming smile suddenly spread over the artist's face. "You have been thunderingly good to me," he said suddenly. He seized Mr. Satterthwaite's hand and wrung it in a powerful grip. "I am no end grateful. I must be off now. Thanks very much for one of the most extraordinary evenings I have ever spent."
He looked round as though to say good-by to someone else and then started. "I say, sir, your friend has gone. I never saw him go. He is rather a queer bird, isn't he?"
"He goes and comes very suddenly," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "That is one of his characteristics. One doesn't always see him come and go."
"Like Harlequin," said Frank Bristow, "he is invisible," and laughed heartily at his own joke.
THE BIRD WITH THE BROKEN WING
Mr. Satterthwaite looked out of the window. It was raining steadily. He shivered. Very few country houses, he reflected, were really properly heated. It cheered him to think that in a few hours' time he would be speeding toward London. Once one had passed sixty years of age, London was really much the best place.
He was feeling a little old and pathetic. Most of the members of the house party were so young. Four of them had just gone off into the library to do table turning. They had invited him to accompany them but he had declined. He failed to derive any amusement from the monotonous counting of the letters of the alphabet and the usual meaningless jumble of letters that resulted.
Yes, London was the best place for him. He was glad that he had declined Madge Keeley's invitation when she had rung up to invite him over to Laidell half an hour ago. An adorable young person, certainly, but London was best.
Mr. Satterthwaite shivered again and remembered that the fire in the library was usually a good one. He opened the door and adventured cautiously into the darkened room.
"If I'm not in the way--"
"Was that N or M? We shall have to count again. No, of course not, Mr. Satterthwaite. Do you know, the most exciting things have been happening. The spirit says her name is Ada Spiers and John here is going to marry someone called Gladys Bun almost immediately."
Mr. Satterthwaite sat down in a big easy chair in front of the fire. His eyelids drooped over his eyes and he dozed. From time to time he returned to consciousness, hearing fragments of speech.
"It can't be P A B Z L--not unless he's a Russian. John, you're shoving. I _saw_ you. I believe it's a new spirit come."
Another interval of dozing. Then a name jerked him wide awake.
"Q U I N. Is that right?" "Yes, it's rapped once for Yes." "Quin. Have you a message for someone here? Yes. For me? For John? For Sarah? For Evelyn? No--but there's no one else. Oh! it's for Mr. Satterthwaite, perhaps? It says, 'Yes.' Mr. Satterthwaite, it's a message for you."
"What does it say?"
Mr. Satterthwaite was broad awake now, sitting taut and erect in his chair, his eyes shining.
The table rocked and one of the girls counted. "L A I--it can't be--that doesn't make sense. No word begins L A I."
"Go on," said Mr. Satterthwaite, and the command in his voice was so sharp that he was obeyed without question.
"L A I D E L--and another L--Oh! that seems to be all."
"Go on."
"Tell us some more, please."
A pause.
"There doesn't seem to be any more. The table's gone quite dead. How silly."
"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite thoughtfully. "I don't think it's silly."
He rose and left the room. He went straight to the telephone. Presently he was through.
"Can I speak to Miss Keeley? Is that you, Madge, my dear? I want to change my mind, if I may, and accept your kind invitation. It is not so urgent as I thought that I should get back to town. Yes--yes--I will arrive in time for dinner."
He hung up the receiver, a strange flush on his withered cheeks. Mr. Quin--the mysterious Mr. Harley Quin. Mr. Satterthwaite counted over on his fingers the times he had been brought into contact with that man of mystery. Where Mr. Quin was concerned--_things happened_! What had happened or was going to happen--at Laidell?
Whatever it was, there was work for him, Mr. Satterthwaite, to do. In some way or other, he would have an active part to play. He was sure of that.
Laidell was a large house. Its owner, David Keeley, was one of those quiet men with indeterminate personalities who seem to count as part of the furniture. Their inconspicuousness has nothing to do with brain power--David Keeley was a most brilliant mathematician and had written a book totally incomprehensible to ninety-nine hundredths of humanity. But like so many men of brilliant intellect, he radiated no bodily vigor or magnetism. It was a standing joke that David Keeley was a real "invisible man." Footmen passed him by with the vegetables, and guests forgot to say how do you do or good-by.
His daughter Madge was very different. A fine upstanding young woman, bursting with energy and life. Thorough, healthy, and normal, and extremely pretty.
It was she who received Mr. Satterthwaite when he arrived. "How nice of you to come--after all."
"Very delightful of you to let me change my mind. Madge, my dear, you're looking very well."
"Oh! I'm always well."
"Yes, I know. But it's more than that. You look--well, blooming is the word I have in mind. Has anything happened, my dear? Anything--well--special?"
She laughed--blushed a little. "It's too bad, Mr. Satterthwaite. You always guess things."
He took her hand. "So it's that, is it? Mr. Right has come along?"
It was an old-fashioned term, but Madge did not object to it. She rather liked Mr. Satterthwaite's old-fashioned ways.
"I suppose so--yes. But nobody's supposed to know. It's a secret. But I don't really mind your knowing, Mr. Satterthwaite. You're always so nice and sympathetic."
Mr. Satterthwaite thoroughly enjoyed romance at second hand. He was sentimental and Victorian. "I mustn't ask who the lucky man is? Well, then all I can say is that I hope he is worthy of the honor you are conferring on him."
_Rather a duck, old Mr. Satterthwaite_, thought Madge.
"Oh! we shall get on awfully well together, I think," she said. "You see, we like doing the same things, and that's so awfully important, isn't it? We've really got a lot in common--and we know all about each other and all that. It's really been coming on for a long time. That gives one such a nice safe feeling, doesn't it?"
"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "But in my experience one can never really know all about anyone else. That is part of the interest and charm of life."
"Oh! I'll risk it," said Madge, laughing, and they went up to dress for dinner.
Mr. Satterthwaite was late. He had not brought a valet, and having his things unpacked for him by a stranger always flurried him a little. He came down to find everyone assembled, and in the modern style Madge merely said:
"Oh! here's Mr. Satterthwaite. I'm starving. Let's go in."
She led the way with a tall gray-haired woman--a woman of striking personality. She had a very clear, rather incisive, voice and her face was clear-cut and rather beautiful.
"How d'you do, Satterthwaite," said Mr. Keeley.
Mr. Satterthwaite jumped. "How do you do," he said. "I'm afraid I didn't see you."
"Nobody does," said Mr. Keeley sadly.
They went in. The table was a low oval of mahogany. Mr. Satterthwaite was placed between his young hostess and a short, dark girl--a very hearty girl with a loud voice and a ringing, determined laugh that expressed more the determination to be cheerful at all costs than any real mirth. Her name seemed to be Doris and she was the type of young woman Mr. Satterthwaite most disliked. She had, he considered, no artistic justification for existence.
On Madge's other side was a man of about thirty whose likeness to the gray-haired woman proclaimed them mother and son.
Next to him--
Mr. Satterthwaite caught his breath.
He didn't know what it was exactly. It was not beauty. It was something else--something much more elusive and intangible than beauty.
She was listening to Mr. Keeley's rather ponderous dinner-table conversation, her head bent a little sideways. She was there, it seemed to Mr. Satterthwaite--and yet she was not there! She was, somehow, a great deal less substantial than anyone else seated round the oval table. Something in the droop of her body sideways was beautiful--was more than beautiful. She looked up--her eyes met Mr. Satterthwaite's for the moment across the table--and the word he wanted leaped to his mind.
_Enchantment_--that was it. She had the quality of enchantment. She might have been one of those creatures who are only half human--one of the Hidden People from the Hollow Hills. She made everyone else look rather too real.
But at the same time, in a queer way, she stirred his pity. It was as though semi-humanity handicapped her. He sought for a phrase and found it. _A bird with a broken wing_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite.
Satisfied, he turned his mind back to the subject of Girl Guides and hoped that the girl Doris had not noticed his abstraction. When she turned to the man on the other side of her--a man Mr. Satterthwaite had hardly noticed--he himself turned to Madge.