Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 4

"Why haven't you got her now?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Mother started dying in Holland," replied his brother, "and we miss our coffee."

"I'll do it to-morrow night," said d.i.c.k.

"What'll Rogers say?" said Randal.

"Rogers? You don't tell me you've got Rogers still?"

"Of course I have."

"Not _my_ Mrs. Rogers!" exclaimed d.i.c.k. "Why, she'd let me skate all over her kitchen, if I wanted to."

Randal Bellamy, although he had a motor-car and used the telephone, lagged lovingly behind the times in less important matters. He was proud of his bra.s.s candlesticks, and hated electric light.

While Amaryllis was saying good-night to her host, d.i.c.k Bellamy lighted her candle and waited for her at the foot of the stairs. When she reached him, she did not at once take it, so that they mounted several steps together; then she paused.

"Good night, Mr. Bellamy. I hope you didn't hurt your fingers, putting the fire out. Are you a very awkward person?" she asked, looking up at him whimsically.

"Shocking," said d.i.c.k. "I'm always doing things like that."

"I believe you are," she replied softly. "Thank you so much."

When he went to his room that night, d.i.c.k Bellamy was followed by a vivid ghost with reddish-gold hair, golden-brown, expressive eyes, adorable mouth, and skin of perfect texture, over neck and shoulders of a creamy whiteness which melted into the warmer colour of the face by gradation so fine that none could say where that flush as of a summer sunset first touched the snow.

As he got into bed, he told himself that he did not object to being haunted up to midnight, nor even over the edge of sleep, by a spook so attractive. But if it should come to waking too early to a spectre implacable--well, that had happened to him once only, long ago, and he didn't want it to happen again.

But the car would be all right to-morrow--there was always the car.

CHAPTER V.

AMBROTOX.

Amaryllis found her father and Sir Randal at the breakfast-table.

"I'm so glad I'm not the laziest," she said, as she took her seat.

"I'm afraid you are, my dear," replied her father.

"d.i.c.k's fetching his car from Iddingfield," explained Randal.

The air was torn by three distinct wails from a syren.

"How unearthly!" said Amaryllis, with her hands to her ears.

"That's d.i.c.k," said his brother. "He would have a noise worse than anyone else's."

d.i.c.k came in from the garden. "Morning, Miss Caldegard," he said, as he sat down. "How d'you like my hooter? Sounds like a fog-horn deprived of its young, doesn't it?"

Amaryllis laughed.

"I hate it," she said.

Randal looked up from the letter he was reading.

"I'm afraid you two will have to amuse each other this morning," he said, glancing from the girl to his brother as he handed the letter across the table to Caldegard. "That'll take a lot of answering, and I can't do it without your help. I'm afraid Sir Charles has got hold of the wrong end of the stick."

"How are you going to amuse me, Miss Caldegard?" asked d.i.c.k.

"I haven't the faintest idea," she replied.

"Help me try my car?"

"I should like to--if you can do without me, dad?"

At half-past seven that evening Sir Randal went to his brother's room, and found him dressing for dinner.

"Nice sort of chap you are," he said. "I ask you to amuse a young woman after breakfast----"

"I did," said d.i.c.k.

"And you keep her for eight hours. Where have you been?"

"Miss Caldegard bought things in Oxford Street. We had lunch in Oxford, and tea at Chesham," said d.i.c.k, brus.h.i.+ng his hair carefully back from his forehead. "You can't call that wasting time."

"Not yours," said his brother. And they went to dinner.

Before Amaryllis left the table, d.i.c.k rose from his seat.

"Where are you going?" asked his brother.

"To keep my tryst with Mrs. Rogers," said d.i.c.k, and went out.

"I've told 'em we'll have our wine and coffee in the study, Caldegard,"

said Randal. "I think it's the safest place for what we're going to talk about."

Amaryllis rose to leave them together, but her father stopped her.

"You'll come with us, won't you, my dear? You're one of the gang," he said.

"What gang?" she asked, looking at him with eyes opened wide.