The collar buttons Verbeena knew she would be able to use, she kicked the lost dignity aside but stood interested in the newspaper clipping.
Logically too. It was about her.
“MISS MAYONNAISE MUCHLY MISSING.”
Such was the headline in the Biscuit Bismallah.
And the article went on to say:
“The world is in stupendous alarm over the disappearance of Miss Verbeena Mayonnaise who left the Hotel Biscuit here without her bacon and eggs more than a month ago or giving the clerk her forwarding address. She even forgot to pay her bill.
“Her intention was to take a jaunty junket into the far wild places of the Sahara and it would appear that she has.
“Not a squeak has been heard from Miss Mayonnaise since.
“Miss Mayonnaise, indeed, is as thoroughly missing as sauce Neuburg from American life.
“She was a grand girl in a gentlemanly way and things really don’t look so good as to her fate.
“It is deplorable that the sands of the desert carry no wireless and the palm trees in this regard are also imperturbable.
“The terribly alarmed world has spoken to the British authorities demanding an immediate search but the discouraging reply has been: ‘What can we do? The Sahara is so much larger than Scotland Yard!’
“Lord Tawdry, the magnificently-mustached brother of Miss Mayonnaise, is concerned to distraction.
“He stopped playing bridge long enough to say so.
“A hotel porter of the Biscuit whom she forgot to tip, it is understood, has instituted a search for her but found no trace of the daring young adventurer in a seventy-mile trip out on the desert beyond 86,000 cigarette stumps.
“And some scattered Arabs running around the Sahara asking Allah to alleviate their condition in the matter of a she-demon who is banging a great and well-known Sheik about haphazardly.
“They have given her the name of ‘Jinny.’
“Although this clue is, of course, unpromising it was learned by cable late last night that Sherlock Holmes has telephoned Doctor Watson to come on over to Baker street, he’s got something interesting on.
“Confidence has been hopefully and freely expressed that if Mr. Holmes doesn’t find Miss Mayonnaise he will, at any rate, lose Watson.”
Verbeena’s hopes and aims went vaunting in a very triumphant manner on the reading of this clipping.
It was mean, however, she thought of Mr. Hitchings not to have shown it to her.
Yet leaving it behind may have been one of his subtleties.
Anyway, hooray!