Till the Clock Stops | Page 3

told of this
little business of ours. As you know, Lancaster and I are his oldest
friends, and he might not regard the business as we should like him to
regard it."
"You may count on my discretion," returned the young man, "and I
fancy Uncle Christopher will be too proud to ask questions. Well, I
must really go."
When the door had closed, Bullard took up the document, folded it, and
placed it in a long envelope.
"Lancaster!"
Lancaster did not seem to hear. He had dropped back into the

easy-chair, his hands to the fire.
Bullard went over and tapped him on the shoulder, and he started.
"What's the matter, Lancaster?"
"Oh, nothing--nothing!" Lancaster sat up. "I feel a bit fagged to-day.
I--I'm rather glad that bit of business is over. I didn't like it, though it
was only a matter of--"
"Perhaps nothing; perhaps half a million--"
"'Sh, Bullard! We must not think of such a thing. Christopher may live
for many years, and--"
"He won't do that! The attacks are becoming more frequent."
"--And with all my heart I hope the boy will return safely."
"And so say we all of us!" returned Bullard. "Only I like to be prepared
for emergencies. After all, we can't be positive that Christopher will do
the friendly to us when the time comes, and Alan being the only
relative is certain to benefit, more or less. Our own prospects are not so
bright as they were. Of course, you've run through a pile--at least, Mrs.
Lancaster has done it for you--"
"If you please, Bullard--"
"Come in!"
A clerk entered, handed a telegram to Lancaster, and withdrew.
Bullard lounged over to one of the windows, and lit a cigarette.
Presently a queer sound caused him to turn sharply. Lancaster was
lying back, his face chalky.
"Fainted, good Lord!" muttered Bullard, and took a step towards a
cabinet in the corner. He checked himself, came back and picked up the
message. He read:

"Just arrived with valuable goods to sell. Shall I give first offer to
Christopher or to you and Bullard? Reply c/o P.O., Tilbury. Edwin
Marvel."
"Damnation!" said Bullard.
CHAPTER I
Despite its handsome and costly old furnishings, the room gave one a
sense of space and comfort; its agreeable warmth was too equable to
have been derived solely from the cheerful blaze in the veritable
Adam's fireplace, which seemed to have provided the keynote to the
general scheme of decoration. The great bay-window overlooked a long,
gently sloping lawn, bounded on either side by shrubbery, trees, and
hedges, terminated by shrubbery and hedges alone, the trees originally
there having been long since removed to admit of a clear view of the
loch, the Argyllshire hills, and the stretch of Firth of Clyde right down
to Bute and the Lesser Cumbrae. Even in summer the garden, while
scrupulously tidy, would have offered but little colour display; its few
flower beds were as stiff in form and conventional in arrangement as a
jobbing gardener on contract to an uninterested proprietor could make
them. And on this autumn afternoon, when the sun seemed to rejoice
coldly over the havoc of yesterday's gale and the passing of things
spared to die a natural death, the eye was fain to look beyond to the
beauty of the eternal waters and the glory of the everlasting hills.
Turning from the window, one noticed that the brown walls harboured
but four pictures, a couple of Bone etchings and a couple by
Laguilérmie after Orchardson. There were three doors, that in the left
wall being the entrance; the other two, in the right and back walls, near
the angle, suggested presses, being without handles. In the middle of
the back wall, a yard's distance from the floor, was a niche, four feet in
height by one in breadth by the latter in depth, a plain oblong, at
present unoccupied. Close inspection would have revealed signs of its
recent construction.
Near the centre of the room a writing-table stood at such an angle that

the man seated at it, in the invalid's wheeled chair, could look from the
window to the fire with the least possible movement of the head. You
would have called him an old man, though his age was barely sixty.
Hair and short beard were white. He was thin to fragility, yet his hand,
fingering some documents, was steady, and his eyes, while sunken,
were astonishingly bright. His mobile pale lips hinted at a nature kindly,
if not positively tender, yet they could smile grimly, bitterly, in secret.
Such was Christopher Craig, a person of no importance publicly or
socially, yet the man who, to the knowledge of those two individuals
now sitting at his hearth, had left the Cape, five years ago, with a