The Loudwater Mystery | Page 5

reflected
for a while on the likeness between Hutchings and his master. He

thought the physical likeness of little interest. There was a whole clan
of Hutchingses in the villages and woods round the castle, the bulk of
them gamekeepers; and there had been for generations. Mr. Manley
was much more interested in the resemblance in character between
Hutchings and Lord Loudwater. Hutchings, probably under the
pressure of circumstances, was much less of a bore than his master, but
quite as much of a bully. Also, he was more intelligent, and
consequently more dangerous. Mr. Manley would on no account have
had him look at him with the intense malignity with which he had
looked at his master. Doubtless the butler had far greater self-control
than Lord Loudwater; but if ever he did lose it it would be
uncommonly bad for Lord Loudwater.
It would be interesting to find in the Loudwater archives the common
ancestor to whom they both cast so directly back. He fancied that it
must be the third Baron. At any rate, both had his protruding blue eyes,
softened in his portrait doubtless by the natural politeness of the
fashionable painter. Was it worth his while to look up the record of the
third Lord Loudwater? He decided that, if he found himself at sufficient
leisure, he would. Then he decided that he was glad that Hutchins was
going; the butler had shown him but little civility. Then he set about
answering the letters.
When he had finished them he took up the stockbroker's cheque and
considered it with a thoughtful frown. He had never before seen a
cheque for so large a sum; and it interested him. Then he wrote a short
note of instructions to Lord Loudwater's bankers. The ink in his
fountain-pen ran out as he came to the end of it, and he signed it with
the pen with which Lord Loudwater had endorsed the cheque. He put
the cheque into the envelope he had already addressed, put stamps on
all the letters, carried them to the post-box on a table in the hall, went
through the library out into the garden, and smoked a cigarette with a
somewhat languid air. Then he went into the library and took up his
task of cataloguing the books at the point at which he had stopped the
day before. He often paused to dip at length into a book before entering
it in the catalogue. He did not believe in hasty work.

CHAPTER II
Lord Loudwater came to lunch in a better temper than that in which he
had left the breakfast-table. He had ridden eight miles round and about
his estate, and the ride had soothed that seat of the evil humours--his
liver. Lady Loudwater had been careful to shut Melchisidec in her
boudoir; James Hutchings had no desire in the world to see his master's
florid face or square back, and had instructed Wilkins and Holloway,
the first and second footmen, to wait at table. Lord Loudwater therefore
could, without any ruffling of his sensibilities, give all his thought to
his food, and he did. The cooking at the castle was always excellent. If
it was not, he sent for the chef and spoke to him about it.
There was little conversation at lunch. Lady Loudwater never spoke to
her husband first, save on rare occasions about a matter of importance.
It was not that she perceived any glamour of royalty about him; she did
not wish to hear his voice. Besides, she had never found a
conversational opening so harmless that he could not contrive, were it
his whim, to be offensive about it. Besides, she had at the moment
nothing to say to him.
In truth, owing to the fact that she took so many practically silent meals
with him, she was becoming rather a gourmet. The food, naturally the
most important fact, had become really the most important fact at the
meals they took together. She had come to realize this. It was the only
advantage she had ever derived from her intercourse with her husband.
At this lunch, however, she did not pay as much attention to the food as
usual, not indeed as much as it deserved. Her mind would stray from it
to Colonel Grey. She wondered what he would tell her about herself
that afternoon. He was always discovering possibilities in her which
she had never discovered for herself. She only perceived their existence
when he pointed them out to her. Then they became obvious. Also, he
was always discovering fresh facts, attractive facts, about her--about

her eyes and lips and hair and figure. He imparted each discovery to her
as he made it, without delay, and with the genuine enthusiasm of a
discoverer. Of course, he should