Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

Scotland Yard took down particulars.

‘Expense no object,’ said Mr. Thorpe.

‘I can’t pay,’ said Jocelyn, who was shivering.

‘But I can,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘What you’ve got to do,’ he continued to the official, ‘is to find her instantly—instantly, do you hear? Get a move on. Not a minute to lose. If you’d seen her you’d understand—eh?’ he said, turning to Jocelyn for confirmation, who only shivered.

This great place—all the policemen they had met—all the being passed on from one official to another—nothing but officials, officials everywhere—it struck his heart cold. Sally in connection with this? He couldn’t speak. His lips were dry. He felt sick.

‘Upset,’ said Mr. Thorpe confidentially to the official. ‘Husband. Bound to be.’

The official nodded, and began telephoning.

‘I’ll let you know,’ he said to Mr. Thorpe, the receiver at his ear. ‘It’s no use your waiting here. Where can I—that you, Williams? Just one moment—where can I ring you up?’

And he wrote down the name of the hotel Mr. Thorpe gave him, for Mr. Thorpe wasn’t going to leave London till he had found Sally, not if he had to stay in it ten years, and then bowed his head in abstracted dismissal, his eyes gone absent-minded while he rapidly conversed with the person at the other end of the telephone.

‘Come on,’ said Mr. Thorpe, laying hold of Jocelyn’s arm.

He took him away to the hotel. The hotel was the Carlton. ‘Know me at the Carlton,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who in the first year of his widowerhood, before he felt justified in beginning to court Mrs. Luke, had sometimes consoled himself with the cooking of the Carlton. And thus it was that Mrs. Luke presently found herself too at the Carlton, for Jocelyn, who no more than Mr. Thorpe would leave the neighbourhood of Scotland Yard, was concerned for his mother, left alone at Almond Tree Cottage. So Mr. Thorpe sent the car back for her, and also for the necessary luggage. He couldn’t quite see himself appearing next morning at the Carlton in the dinner-jacket he put on every night at Abergeldie because of the butler.