Cleigh turned and went down the ladder. Twenty times he circled the deck;
then he paused under the bridge and sent up a hail.
"Dinner is ready!"
The moment Jane reached the deck Cleigh put an arm round her.
"No other human being could have done it. It is a cup of gall and
wormwood, but I'll take it. Why? Because I am old and lonely and want a
little love. I have no faith in Cunningham's word, but he shall go free."
"How long since you kissed any one?" she asked.
"Many years." And he stooped to her cheek. To press back the old brooding
thought he said with cheerful brusqueness: "Suppose we celebrate? I'll
have Togo ice a bottle of that vintage those infernal ruffians broke over
your head last night."
Dennison laughed.
* * * * *
October.
The Cleigh library was long and wide. There was a fine old blue Ispahan on
the floor. The chairs were neither historical nor uncomfortable. One came
in here to read. The library was on the second floor. When you reached
this room you left the affairs of state and world behind.
A wood fire crackled and shifted in the fireplace, the marble hood of
which had been taken from a famous Italian palace. The irons stood ready
as of yore for the cups of mulled wine. Before this fire sat a little old
woman knitting. Her feet were on a hassock. From time to time her
bird-like glance swept the thinker in the adjacent chair. She wondered
what he could see in the fire there to hold his gaze so steadily. The
little old lady had something of the attitude of a bird that had been
given its liberty suddenly, and having always lived in a cage knew not
what to make of all these vast spaces.
She was Jane's mother, and sitting in the chair beside her was Anthony
Cleigh.
"There are said to be only five portable authentic paintings by Leonardo
da Vinci," said Cleigh, "and I had one of them, Mother. Illegally,
perhaps, but still I had it. It is a copy that hangs in the European
gallery. There's a point. Gallery officials announce a theft only when
some expert had discovered the substitution. There are a number of
so-called Da Vincis, but those are the works of Boltraffio, Da Vinci's
pupil. I'll always be wondering, even in my grave, where that crook,
Eisenfeldt, had disposed of it."
Mrs. Norman went on with her knitting. What she heard was as instructive
and illuminating to her as Chinese would have been.