Having wrestled himself into some sort of quiet of heart and brain, Dollops continued to lie in wait until the strangers had come out through the grilled door, and stood a moment with the candle between them, talking in low tones, and glancing occasionally up the flight of stairs by which he had only just descended. One of them had his back to him, but the other's face was in full view. It was a dark, swarthy-skinned face, with black eyes and crisp black moustache curling upon the upper lip, the slim nose and aquiline features revealing to the watching lad the very evident fact that here was a genuine Italian.
And the other? He'd seen that tweed coat before, surely--but where? Where? He racked his brains to think. Somewhere that tweed coat had crossed his vision once before during that day, and in some unaccountable manner it was associated in his mind with Sir Ross Duggan himself....
The men moved quietly, blew out the candle, and then opened the door opposite and began to climb up the stone stairway into the fresh air, creeping about like mice.
Meanwhile Dollops, afraid no longer, and all his being afire to get to his master with news of this new development--and so make up for his slowness this afternoon, when the lady had so successfully given him the slip right here within his reach--stood stock-still, raking every corner of that fertile young brain of his for the clue which eluded him.
Twenty minutes later he presented himself once more at the back door, and asked in scathing accents for Mr. Jarvis, dangling the keys of the wine-cellar in one careless hand.
That gentleman appeared to him, changed for his evening duties in the dining-room, and with one eye upon the clock, clapped him upon the shoulder and guffawed into his face.
"Blinkin' idiot!" thought Dollops, as he grinned back. "Might er frightened me into foamin' at the mouth like a bloomin' 'oss, he might." Then, aloud: "Nice practical joke ter play upon a feller, eh, Mr. Jarvis? Nah! if I'd been sufferin' wiv me nerves and 'avin' calisthenics wot's so fashionable just at presint, you could of sent me to my coffin--strite."
"But you're alive an' kickin' now, me 'earty!" returned Jarvis, with another guffaw, "an' lookin' in the pink, I must s'y. What about them bottles of port?--or didn't yer stop ter look into the wine-cellar? Didn't bring 'em up, I notice."