On the doorstep stood the Inspector, but not alone. Accompanying him was a dapper man in a well-cut lounge suit with a gardenia in his button-hole.
The crowd watched them owlishly.
The Inspector spoke, in a voice pregnant with fate. “This is Mr. Howard, sir,” he said.
“Morning,” said the dapper man unsmilingly. “I’m Colonel Ratcliffe, the Chief Constable. I want to see Mr. Nesbitt.”
Chapter X.
Laura Surpasses Herself
At much the same time as Guy Nesbitt was asking his wife for a second cup of coffee, Mr. Priestley was requesting of his pseudo-wife a similar favour. They were breakfasting in the combined coffee-room, restaurant and private sitting-room of the little inn, and they knew now a good many things which they had not known before. They knew, for instance, that the inn was the Black Swan, that it was in the minute village of Sandersworth and that Sandersworth was, roughly, thirty-five miles from Duffley and nearly a hundred from London. They also knew that they thoroughly approved of the minute village of Sandersworth.
It is impossible for two people of opposite sexes to sleep in the same room, however remotely, without experiencing afterwards a rather exciting, if quite innocent feeling of intimacy. It was the first time Mr. Priestley had breakfasted alone with a charmingly pretty girl; it was the first time Laura had breakfasted alone with a strange man of less than twenty-four hours’ acquaintance; yet, somehow, the situation seemed perfectly natural to both of them. Considering what had gone before, this is not surprising. For besides the sleeping in the same room, there had been the getting up in the same room, and that had been even more amusing.
There had been the discussion, for example, interspersed with stifled giggles, which had resulted in Mr. Priestley going on to lurk in some place unspecified (the little inn boasted no bathroom) where he might remained concealed from the landlady and Annie (who, however, did not count one way or the other) while Laura washed. Then there had been the deliciously exciting moment when Mr. Priestley, in order to save time and ensure a simultaneous appearance at the breakfast-table, had been re-admitted to shave with a borrowed razor while Laura, blushing faintly in the blue flannel dressing-gown, but far more amused than embarrassed, let him in and then attended to her shingled hair and completed her toilet behind an improvised screen of eiderdown and blanket in a corner of the room. Then she, fully dressed, had gone off to lurk while Mr. Priestley made himself ready to face the world.
No more improper, the whole thing, in its essentials than a bathe, let us say, from the same large cave on a rocky beach, which in the eyes of the world is nothing; but far, far more thrilling, for the very reason of those same censorious eyes. For whereas in the estimation of the two principals the whole affair was as innocent as innocence can well be and they had gained rather than lost in self-respect, in the eyes of the world they had lost everything. The world will never consent to believe the best when it has a chance of believing the worst.
It had been, therefore, a Very Great Adventure.