CHAPTER XXXVII

Mrs. Foster came down to breakfast on Thursday morning in a state of nervous exasperation.

“Really, Archie’s the limit! Yes, I know he’s my cousin. Now, George, it’s no use you looking like that-I never said he was your cousin or anybody else’s cousin-I know he’s mine. But you needn’t try and make out that all your relations are angel beings who never do tiresome things, or land you in holes, or shove strange girls onto you in the middle of a dinner-party.”

The broad face of George Foster emerged from behind The Times.

“Got a bit off the rails, haven’t you? Take a good deep breath and start fresh.”

“George!”

“My dear child, what is it?”

“I’m feeling simply too temperamental, and I could kill Archie! First he dumps this girl on me in the very middle of a dinner party-”

“My good Ernestine!”

“It was the next thing to it, and my table would have been utterly spoilt if I hadn’t been firm and insisted on his removing her for the evening.”

George grinned.

“I didn’t notice your having to insist very much. Archie appeared only too anxious to oblige.”

“Oh, of course he’s in love with her. It’s the only excuse he’s got. George, if you go on rustling the paper like that, I shall scream.”

“What is the matter?”

“Really, George, you might have a little consideration, after the shock of having burglars and a dinner-party and Archie’s stray flapper all happening together. And I want to know what brought Maud Silver here. She asked for that girl.”

“Who’s Maud Silver?”

Ernestine flushed scarlet and bit her lip.

“You know perfectly well. She got back those odious diamonds your mother gave me. And I must say I didn’t think you’d refer to it now when I’m feeling as if I simply couldn’t bear to hear myself think.”

George said nothing; he returned to the golfing news.

“I do really think you might say something, George! You’re simply immersed in that wretched paper. I believe you’d just go on reading it with a burglar in the very room.”

“What d’you want me to say? Hullo! Sandy Herd did a jolly hot round yesterday.”

“Really, George!”

“What’s the matter?”

“If you talk to me about golf, I shall burst into tears.”

“What d’you want me to talk about?”

“The burglar, of course. What on earth did he come for?”

“Anything he could collect, I suppose.”

“Then why did he pull out everything in the spare room and not so much as look for my diamonds? Can you tell me that?”

George could not. He lacked interest in the burglar. Since nothing had been taken, why make a song and dance about it? He reverted to golf.

Miss Greta Wilson was late for breakfast. When she had finished, she accompanied a slightly calmer but still fractious hostess on what George rudely described as a “nose-flattening tour.”

“Men never seem to think you want any clothes,” said Mrs. Foster. “George is perfectly hopeless. If I say I want a new evening dress, he boasts, positively boasts, of the fact that his evening clothes are pre-Ararat.”

Greta giggled.

“I love looking at clothes,” she.said. “It’s the next best thing to buying them-isn’t it?”

They looked at a great many. Ernestine bought a hat, a jumper, and some silk stockings, which soothed her a good deal. At twelve o’clock she remembered with a shriek of dismay that she had promised, absolutely promised, to ring up Renee Latouche and give her Jim Maxwell’s address.

“I looked it up on purpose. And then George interrupted me and it went right out of my head. Come along to Harridge’s and I’ll ring up from there.”

As they turned into the big stores, a car came out of a narrow side street and drew up by the farther kerb.

Mrs. Foster left Greta to wander about on the ground floor whilst she rushed upstairs to telephone.

“But I shall be at least twenty minutes, because it always takes simply ages to get Renee to the telephone. I know I shall have to talk to everyone in the house before I get her. Maddening, I call it.”

Greta was quite pleased to be left. She looked at bewilderingly lovely materials shining with all the colours of the rainbow, and planned a dozen dresses. She then wandered into a duller department which displayed travelling rugs. She was not really interested in travelling rugs, but she pinched a fold of one of them to see how soft it was. As she did so, a curious thing happened. A man’s hand and arm came into view for a moment. She did not see the man, who was standing behind her; she only saw his hand and arm. The hand was broad and hairy, the sleeve of dark blue serge. The hand laid a note on the fleecy brown travelling rug and withdrew as suddenly as it had come.

Greta looked at the note with eyes as round as saucers. The colour drained slowly away from her rosy cheeks. She stared at the note and grew paler and paler. The envelope was grey-not the common Silurian grey, but a curious rough grey paper which was very uncommon. The envelope was addressed in a bold clear hand to Miss Margot Standing.

After a minute of terrified hesitation Margot took up the envelope and tore it open.

When Ernestine Foster had finished her conversation with Mrs. Latouche, she remembered that she had promised to bring home fruit for lunch. She bought a pineapple; then decided that it would certainly be sour and that George would inquire how much she had paid for it. After hesitating for ten minutes between grapes and Cape peaches she decided on bananas and apples, and then set out in a hurry to look for Greta.

Greta was not in the silk department, where she had left her, nor in the Bank, where they had agreed to meet. She was not in Jewellery, Furs, Gloves, Lingerie, Haberdashery, Glass, China or Gramophones.

Ernestine’s temper mounted rapidly. During the morning Greta’s sympathetic attitude towards clothes in general and Ernestine’s purchases in particular had softened her a good deal towards her guest; but after Mrs. Foster had searched fifteen departments Greta had a very serious relapse into being “that odious flapper of Archie’s.” After half a dozen more departments, Ernestine was not only angry, but just a little alarmed. Of course the creature had got tired of waiting and gone home-girls of that age never have any manners. But-

She questioned the commissionaire at every door. The man at the door by which she and Greta had entered the stores remembered the young lady very well. He knew Mrs. Foster by sight, and he remembered her coming in with a young lady. He remembered more than that; he remembered the young lady coming out about ten minutes later. Oh yes, he was quite sure it was the same young lady-she came out, and she got into a car that was waiting at the other side of the street.

“Was she alone?”

“Oh yes, madam, quite alone. There was a gentleman in the car.”

“What sort of gentleman?”

“I couldn’t say, madam. It was a closed car with a chauffeur. The chauffeur went into the stores and came out again a minute or two before the young lady.”

“What kind of a car was it?”

“It was a Daimler, madam.”

Ernestine went home very angry indeed. She rang up her cousin, Archie Millar, and was told he had gone out for lunch. She left an urgent message, and upbraided George all through lunch for the total lack of courtesy and consideration displayed by his sex.

“If Archie wanted to take the girl out to lunch, why didn’t he say so? Heaven knows where he raised the car from. Archie with a Daimler and a chauffeur, if you please! And isn’t it just like a man to dump a girl on me one minute, and then positively abduct her about five minutes before lunch and without saying a single word? I don’t suppose he’ll go near his office again till three o’clock. Then he’ll shoot the girl back here and expect me to look after her. Would anyone but a man be so exasperating?”