2
At this frank revelation of the red-haired young man's personal
opinions, Sally, though considerably startled, was not displeased. A
broad-minded girl, the outburst seemed to her a legitimate comment on a
matter of public interest. The young man's companion, on the other hand,
was unmixedly shocked.
"My dear fellow!" he ejaculated.
"Oh, it's all right," said the red-haired young man, unmoved. "She
can't understand. There isn't a bally soul in this dashed place that can
speak a word of English. If I didn't happen to remember a few odd bits
of French, I should have starved by this time. That girl," he went on,
returning to the subject most imperatively occupying his mind, "is an
absolute topper! I give you my solemn word I've never seen anybody to
touch her. Look at those hands and feet. You don't get them outside
France. Of course, her mouth is a bit wide," he said reluctantly.
Sally's immobility, added to the other's assurance concerning the
linguistic deficiencies of the inhabitants of Roville, seemed to
reassure the dark man. He breathed again. At no period of his life had
he ever behaved with anything but the most scrupulous correctness
himself, but he had quailed at the idea of being associated even
remotely with incorrectness in another. It had been a black moment for
him when the red-haired young man had uttered those few kind words.
"Still you ought to be careful," he said austerely.
He looked at Sally, who was now dividing her attention between the
poodle and a raffish-looking mongrel, who had joined the party, and
returned to the topic of the mysterious Scrymgeour.
"How is Scrymgeour's dyspepsia?"
The red-haired young man seemed but faintly interested in the
vicissitudes of Scrymgeour's interior.
"Do you notice the way her hair sort of curls over her ears?" he said.
"Eh? Oh, pretty much the same, I think."
"What hotel are you staying at?"
"The Normandie."
Sally, dipping into the box for another chocolate cream, gave an
imperceptible start. She, too, was staying at the Normandie. She
presumed that her admirer was a recent arrival, for she had seen nothing
of him at the hotel.
"The Normandie?" The dark man looked puzzled. "I know Roville pretty
well by report, but I've never heard of any Hotel Normandie. Where is
it?"
"It's a little shanty down near the station. Not much of a place.
Still, it's cheap, and the cooking's all right."
His companion's bewilderment increased.
"What on earth is a man like Scrymgeour doing there?" he said. Sally
was conscious of an urgent desire to know more and more about the absent
Scrymgeour. Constant repetition of his name had made him seem almost
like an old friend. "If there's one thing he's fussy about..."
"There are at least eleven thousand things he's fussy about,"
interrupted the red-haired young man disapprovingly. "Jumpy old
blighter!"
"If there's one thing he's particular about, it's the sort of hotel he
goes to. Ever since I've known him he has always wanted the best. I
should have thought he would have gone to the Splendide." He mused on
this problem in a dissatisfied sort of way for a moment, then seemed to
reconcile himself to the fact that a rich man's eccentricities must be
humoured. "I'd like to see him again. Ask him if he will dine with me at
the Splendide to-night. Say eight sharp."
Sally, occupied with her dogs, whose numbers had now been augmented by a
white terrier with a black patch over its left eye, could not see the
young man's face: but his voice, when he replied, told her that
something was wrong. There was a false airiness in it.
"Oh, Scrymgeour isn't in Roville."
"No? Where is he?"
"Paris, I believe."
"What!" The dark man's voice sharpened. He sounded as though he were
cross-examining a reluctant witness. "Then why aren't you there? What
are you doing here? Did he give you a holiday?"
"Yes, he did."
"When do you rejoin him?"
"I don't."
"What!"
The red-haired young man's manner was not unmistakably dogged.
"Well, if you want to know," he said, "the old blighter fired me the day
before yesterday."
