‘When was that?
‘A few weeks back,’ said Mr. Puddephatt laconically.
This was all he would say.
‘It’s a queer world, Mr. Puddephatt,’ said Richard aloud. To himself he said: ‘Then perhaps she isn’t involved with her father—if he is her father.’
At length they reached the suburbs of London and had to moderate their speed. As they wound in and out through the traffic of Kilburn, Richard’s eye chanced to catch the sign of the British and Scottish Bank. He drew up opposite the mahogany doors of the bank and, leaving Mr. Puddephatt in charge of the car, entered. It was turned ten o’clock. He felt fairly certain that Raphael Craig had not left Queen’s Farm, but he wanted to convince himself that the bank manager was not always so impeccably prompt at business as some people said.
‘I wish to see Mr. Craig,’ he said, just as he had said two hours before to Mrs. Bridget.
‘Mr. Craig,’ said the clerk, ‘is at present taking his annual holiday. He will return to business in a fortnight’s time.’
Richard returned to the car curiously annoyed, with a sense of being baffled. His thoughts ran back to Teresa. Thirty miles of Watling Street now separated them, yet her image was more strenuously before him than it had been at any time since she fainted in the silver-heaped stable on Saturday night.
‘Yes,’ he said to himself positively, ‘I’ll call on Lord Dolmer at once, and tell him I won’t have anything further to do with the affair.’
He dropped Mr. Puddephatt, whose society, he felt, was perhaps growing rather tedious to him, at Oxford Circus, and directed him to an omnibus for the Elephant and Castle.