Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/102

Rh "Humph! Well out of sight of any house. Nobody heard the shot?"

"Nobody noticed it. It's a good way from the house, you see, and a mile from the farm. A shot or so—what's that in the open country? You often hear a gun somewhere."

"Quite. Where's that path go to?" Reggie pointed to a track across the turf diverging from the gravel.

"That? Oh, over to Victor Lunt's place. His park—he calls it a park too, but it's a small affair—almost joins this, you know."

"Well, well, let's see the body," Reggie yawned, and they marched on to Prior's Colney.

It had once been a comely place in a staid eighteenth-century fashion. "Oh, my only aunt!" Reggie groaned. "Looks like your grandmother put into the Russian ballet." It was loaded with excrescences of contorted ornament still raw and new against the mellow solemnity of the original homely house.

A motor-car stood at the door. While they were detaching hats and sticks in the hall, they could hear some one being told that Lady Lunt was not leaving her room. Then, being shown out, came a bulky man muffled in a fur coat with a big Astrakhan collar. He had a large head and a long face of unhealthy complexion. Across the forehead from