Mr Rochborne’s geniality blacked out for a moment, and then he bent to dust off his shoes.
Suddenly he seemed to stiffen. He bent down and picked up a fragment of powdery pale yellow stuff, and crumbled it in his fingers.
A strange look came into his face, and he straightened up quickly, but the Saint was already surrounded by the bored but dutiful news hawks. Mr Rochborne recklessly scuffed his beautifully polished shoes more extensively into the loose earth, bent down to probe it deeper with his manicured fingers...
A mere few hours later, which seemed to him like a few years, he was clutching his hat to his bosom and trying to hold his temperature down to an engaging glow while Mrs Lawrence Phelan, Sr, gushed, “Why, Mr Rochborne! What a pleasant surprise!”
He still felt a little out of breath, but he tried to conceal it.
“As a matter of fact, Mrs Phelan,” he admitted, with the air of a schoolboy caught in the jam closet, “I’m here on business. I hate to impose on you, but...”
“Go on, Mr Rochborne,” she fluted. “Do go on. Business is business, isn’t it?”
“I might as well come right out with it,” Rochborne said wearily. “It’s about that Lucky Nugget stock you bought, Mrs Phelan. I — well, it turns out it was misrepresented to me. I’m not at all sure it’s a good investment.”
“Oh, dear!” Mrs Phelan sat down suddenly. “Oh, dear! But... my... my forty-five thou—”
“Now, Mrs Phelan, don’t excite yourself. If I weren’t prepared to—”