The Shrieking Pit | Page 8

was a sharp tap at the door, which opened to admit a
chambermaid who seemed the last word in frills and smartness.
"If you please, Sir Henry," said the girl, with a sidelong glance at the
tall handsome young man by the mantelpiece, "Lady Durwood would
be obliged if you would go to her room at once."
It speaks well for Sir Henry Durwood that the physician was instantly
merged in the husband. "Tell Lady Durwood I will come at once," he
said. "You'll excuse me," he added, with a courtly bow to his patient.
"Perhaps--if you wish--you might care to see me later."

"Many thanks, Sir Henry, but there will be no need." He bowed gravely
to the specialist, but smiled cordially and held out his hand to Colwyn,
as the latter prepared to follow Sir Henry out of the room. "I hope to
see you later," he said.
But when Colwyn, after a day spent on the golf-links, went into the
dining-room for dinner that evening, the young man's place was vacant.
After the meal Colwyn went to the office to inquire if Mr. Ronald was
still unwell, and learnt, to his surprise, that he had departed from the
hotel an hour or so after his illness.
CHAPTER III
Lunch was over the following day, and the majority of the hotel guests
were assembled in the lounge, some sitting round a log fire which
roared and crackled in the old-fashioned fireplace, others wandering
backwards and forwards to the hotel entrance to cast a weather eye on
the black and threatening sky.
During the night there had been one of those violent changes in the
weather with which the denizens of the British Isles are not altogether
unfamiliar; a heavy storm had come shrieking down the North Sea, and
though the rain had ceased about eleven o'clock the wind had blown
hard all through the night, bringing with it from the Arctic a driving
sleet and the first touch of bitter, icy, winter cold.
The ladies of the hotel, who the previous day had paraded the front in
light summer frocks, sat shivering round the fire in furs; and the men
walked up and down in little groups discussing the weather and the war.
The golfers stood apart debating, after their wont, the possibility of
trying a round in spite of the weather. The elderly clergyman was
prepared to risk it if he could find a partner, and, with the aid of an
umbrella held upside down, was demonstrating to an attentive circle the
possibility of going round the most open course in England in the teeth
of the fiercest gale that ever blew, provided that a brassy was used
instead of a driver.
"I don't see how you could drive a ball with either to-day," said one of

the doubtful ones. "You'd be driving right against the wind for the first
four holes, and when you have the wind behind you at the bend in the
cliff by the fifth, the force of the gale would probably carry your ball
half a mile out to sea. These links here are supposed to be the most
exposed in England."
"My dear sir, you surely do not call this a gale," retorted the clergyman.
"I have played some of my best games in a stronger wind than this.
And as for this being the most exposed course in England--well, let me
ask you one question: have you ever played over the Worthing course
with a strong northeast gale--a gale, mind you, not a wind--sweeping
over the Downs?"
"Can't say I have," grunted the previous speaker, a tall cadaverous man,
wrapped from head to foot in a great grey ulster, and wearing woollen
gloves. "In fact, I've never been on the Worthing course."
"I thought not." The clergyman's face showed a golfer's satisfaction at
having tripped a fellow player. "The Worthing course is the most
difficult course in England, all up hill and down dale, and full of
pitfalls for those who don't know its peculiarities. I had a very
remarkable experience there, last year, with the crack local player--his
handicap was plus two. We played a round in a gale with the wind
whistling over the high downs at the rate of seventy or eighty miles an
hour. My partner didn't want to play at first because of the weather, but
I persuaded him to go round, and I beat him by two up and four to play
solely by relying on the brassy and midiron. He stuck to the driver, and
lost in consequence. I'll just show you how the game went. Suppose the
first hole to be just beyond the hall door there, and you drive off from
here. Now, imagine that umbrella stand--would you mind moving away
a little