"I begin to believe you are," answered Laurence genially, with a comical glance at the other's beaming countenance. "Why, you actually have a look that way. When did you get here?"
"By last night's coach. And, I say,"—trying to look wondrously mysterious and knowing,—"who do you think travelled up by it too?"
"I can't even venture the feeblest guess."
"Can't you?" chuckled Holmes. "What about Miss Ormskirk, eh? How's that?"
"So? Now I remember, she did say something about a possibility of coming up here before long," replied Laurence equably, while conscious that the announcement had convulsed his inner being with a strange, sweet thrill. For it came so aptly upon his meditations of late. The one unsatisfied longing—her presence. And now even that was to be fulfilled.
"You don't seem to take it over enthusiastically, Stanninghame," went on Holmes. "And you and she were rather thick towards the end of the voyage," he added mischievously.
"Did you ever know me enthuse about anything, Holmes? But it's about lunch time; let's go and get some, and you can tell me what you have been doing since we landed from the old Persian, and what the deuce has brought you up here."
This was all very friendly and plausible; but before they had been seated many minutes at lunch in a conveniently adjacent restaurant Holmes was discoursing singularly little upon his doings spread over the weeks which had elapsed since he had landed, but most volubly upon his recent coach journey congested within a space of three days—to which topic he was tactfully moved by his audience of one and also by his own inclination, as will hereinafter appear.
"Was Miss Ormskirk travelling alone, did you say, Holmes?" queried Laurence, in initiation of his deft scheme for "drawing" the other.
"Not much. There was a big parchment-faced Johnny with her. He scowled at me like sin when we were introduced—was inclined to be beastly rude in fact, until he saw that I—er—that I—talked most to the other; then he got quite affable."