“You are sure,” she asked, “that
you do not mind my leaving the rest of this affair
in your hands? There are reasons, which I cannot
tell you of just now, which make me anxious not to
appear in it at all.”
“I accept the charge as a privilege,”
he assented. “We are within a few yards
of my rooms now. I promise you that I will look
after Captain Graham and advise him as to the proper
course for him to pursue.”
The car came to a standstill.
“This then,” she said, holding out her
hand, “will be good-by for the present.”
He held her fingers for a moment without reply.
Quite suddenly she decided that she liked him.
Then he lifted Graham, who was half asleep, half unconscious,
to his feet, and assisted him from the car.
“Where shall I tell the man to go to?”
he inquired.
“He knows,” she answered with sudden taciturnity.
“Wherever it may be, then,” he replied,
“bon voyage!”
It was about half-an-hour later when Sandy Graham
opened his eyes and began to feel the life once more
warm in his veins. He was seated in the most
comfortable easy-chair of John Lutchester’s bachelor
sitting-room. By his side was a coffee equipage
and a decanter of brandy. His head still throbbed,
and his bones ached, but his mind was beginning to
grow clearer. Lutchester, who had been seated
at the writing table, swung round in his chair at
the sound of his guest’s movement.
“Feeling better, eh?” he asked.
“I am all right now,” was the somewhat
shaky reply. “Got a head like a turnip
and a tongue like a lime-kiln, but I’m beginning—to
feel myself.”
“How’s your memory?”
“Hazy. Let me see.... My God, I’ve
been robbed, haven’t I!”
“So I imagine,” Lutchester replied.
“You rather asked for it, didn’t you?”
Graham moved uneasily in his place. He had suddenly
the feeling of being back at school—and
in the presence of the headmaster.
“I suppose I did in a way,” he admitted,
“but at Henry’s—why, I’ve
always looked upon the place as a club more than anything
else.”
“I am afraid that I can’t agree with you
there,” Lutchester observed. “I should
consider Henry’s a remarkably cosmopolitan restaurant,
where a man in your position should exercise more
than even ordinary restraint.”
“I suppose I was wrong,” Graham muttered,
“but I had been working for about ten hours
on end, and then rushed up to London in the car to
try and keep my appointment with Holderness.”
“Stop anywhere on the way?”
“We had a few drinks,” Graham confessed.
“I was so done up. Perhaps I had more than
I meant to. However, it’s no use bothering
about that now. I’ve been robbed, and that’s
all there is about it. Could we get on to Scotland
Yard from here?”
“We could, but I don’t think we will,”
Lutchester replied.
