It was with a trembling hand that Merton, about ten on the Monday morning, took the telegraphic envelope of Fate.
‘I can’t face it,’ he said to Logan. ‘Read the message to me.’ Merton was unmanned!
Logan carelessly opened the envelope and read:
‘Happy ending, but awfully disappointed. Will call at one o’clock.’
‘Oh, thanks to all gracious Powers,’ said Merton falling limply on to a sofa. ‘Ring, Logan, and order a small whisky-and-soda.’
‘I won’t,’ said Logan. ‘Horrid bad habit. Would you like me to send out for smelling-salts? Be a man, Merton! Pull yourself together!’
‘You don’t know that awful girl,’ said Merton, slowly recovering self-control. ‘However, as she is disappointed though the ending is happy, her infernal plan must have been miscarried, whatever it was. It must be all right, though I sha’n’t be quite happy till I see her. I am no coward, Logan’ (and Merton was later to prove that he possessed coolness and audacity in no common measure), ‘but it is the awful sense of responsibility. She is quite capable of getting us into the newspapers.’
‘You funk being laughed at,’ said Logan.
Merton lay on the sofa, smoking too many cigarettes, till, punctually at one o’clock, a peal at the bell announced the arrival of Miss Martin. She entered, radiant, smiling, and in her costume of innocence she looked like a sylph.
‘It is all right—they are engaged, with Mr. Warren’s full approval,’ she exclaimed.