A little later Susan Foley appeared at the door of the living-room.
“Nine o’clock,” she announced calmly. “Supper’s ready. We shan’t wait for Jane.”
When Jane Foley arrived, a reconnaissance proved that the martyrised detective had contrived to get away.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BLUE CITY
In the following month, on a Saturday afternoon, Audrey, Miss Ingate, and Jane Foley were seated at an open-air café in the Blue City.
The Blue City, now no more, was, as may be remembered, Birmingham’s reply to the White City of London, and the imitative White City of Manchester. Birmingham, in that year, was not imitative, and, with its chemical knowledge, it had discovered that certain shades of blue would resist the effects of smoke far more successfully than any shade of white. And experience even showed that these shades of blue were improved, made more delicate and romantic, by smoke. The total impression of the show—which it need hardly be said was situated in the polite Edgbaston district—was ethereal, especially when its minarets and towers, all in accordance with the taste of the period, were beheld from a distance. Nor was the exhibition entirely devoted to pleasure. It had a moral object, and that object was to demonstrate the progress of civilisation in our islands. Its official title, indeed, was “The National Progress Exhibition,” but the citizens of Birmingham and the vicinity never called it anything but the Blue City.
On that Saturday afternoon a Cabinet Minister historically hostile to the idols of Birmingham was about to address a mass meeting in the Imperial Hall of the Exhibition, which held seven thousand people, in order to prove to Birmingham that the Government of which he was a member had done far more for national progress than any other Government had done for national progress in the same length of time. The presence of the Cabinet Minister accounted for the presence of Jane Foley; the presence of Jane Foley accounted for the presence of Audrey; and the presence of Audrey accounted for the presence of Miss Ingate.
Although she was one of the chief organisers of victory, and perhaps—next to Rosamund and the family trio whose Christian names were three sweet symphonies—the principal asset of the Suffragette Union, Jane Foley had not taken an active part in the Union’s arrangements for suitably welcoming the Cabinet Minister; partly because of her lameness, partly because she was writing a book, and partly for secret reasons which it would be unfair to divulge. Nearly at the last moment, however, in consequence of news that all was not well in the Midlands, she had been sent to Birmingham, and, after evading the watch of the police, she had arrived on the previous day in Audrey’s motor-car, which at that moment was waiting in the automobile park outside the principal gates of the Blue City.