“One does,” faltered Mr. Spatt.
They were now in the shopping street, where in the mornings the elect encounter each other on expeditions to purchase bridge-markers, chocolate, bathing costumes and tennis balls. It was a black and empty canyon through which the wind raced.
“He may be down—down on the shore,” Mr. Spatt timidly suggested. He seemed to be suggesting suicide.
They turned and descended across the Greensward to the shore, which was lined with hundreds of bathing huts, each christened with a name, and each deserted, for the by-laws of the Frinton Urban District Council judiciously forbade that the huts should be used as sleeping-chambers. The tide was very low. They walked over the wide flat sands, and came at length to the sea’s roar, the white tumbling of foamy breakers, and the full force of the south-east wind. Across the invisible expanse of water could be discerned the beam of a lightship. And Audrey was aware of mysterious sensations such as she had not had since she inhabited Flank Hall and used to steal out at nights to watch the estuary. And she thought solemnly: “Musa is somewhere near, existing.” And then she thought: “What a silly thought! Of course he is!”
“I see somebody coming!” Mr. Spatt burst out in a dramatic whisper. But the precaution of whispering was useless, because the next instant, in spite of himself, he loudly sneezed.
And about two hundred yards off on the sands Audrey made out a moving figure, which at that distance did in fact seem to have vague appendages that might have resembled a bag and a fiddle case. But the atmosphere of the night was deceptive, and the figure as it approached resolved itself into three figures—a black one in the middle of two white ones. A girl’s coarse laugh came down the wind. It could not conceivably have been the laugh of any girl who went into the shopping street to buy bridge-markers, chocolate, bathing costumes or tennis balls. But it might have been—it not improbably was—the laugh of some girl whose mission was to sell such things. The trio meandered past, heedless. Mr. Spatt said no word, but he appreciably winced. The black figure in the midst of the two white ones was that of his son Siegfried, reputedly so fond of Debussy. As the group receded and faded, a fragment of a music-hall song floated away from it into the firmament.
“I’m afraid it’s not much use looking any longer,” said Mr. Spatt weakly. “He—he may have gone back to the house. Let us hope so.”
At the chief garden gate of the Spatt residence they came upon Miss Nickall, trying to open it. The sling round her arm made her unmistakable. And Miss Nickall having allowed them to recover from a pardonable astonishment at the sight of her who was supposed to be exhausted and in bed, said cheerfully:
“I’ve found him, and I’ve put him up at the Excelsior Hotel.”
Mrs. Spatt had related the terrible episode to her guest, who had wilfully risen at once. Miss Nickall had had luck, but Audrey had to admit that these American girls were stupendously equal to an emergency. And she hated the angelic Nick for having found Musa.