“Good-by, my boy. You must come and see us presently. You’re looking very well, Arsenio. Good-by. Don’t you go, Julius, I want you.”
Arsenio walked down the steps very quickly—indeed, he nearly ran—and got into a taxi which was standing by the curb. He turned and waved his hand towards us as he got in. My uncle was frowning and pursing up his thin, supple lips. He took my arm and we came down the steps together.
“There’s the devil to pay with Waldo,” he said, pressing his hand on my sleeve. “It was all I could do to make him promise to wait till we’d talked it over.”
“What does he want to do?”
“He’s got one of his rages. You know ‘em? They don’t come often, but when they do—well, it’s damned squally weather! And he looks on her as as good as his wife, you see.” He glanced up at me—I am a good deal the taller—with a very unwonted look of distress and apprehension. “He’s not master of himself. It would never do for him to go after them in the state he’s in now.”
“After—them?”
“That’s his view; I incline to it myself, too.”
“She was alone in the taxi.” I blurted it out, more to myself than to him, and quite without thinking.
I told him of my encounter; it had seemed a delusion, but need not seem so now.
“Driving past Marlborough House into the Mall? Looks like Victoria, doesn’t it? Any luggage on the cab?”