“Take a taxi and drive there,” she commanded, “or stop. You will find my car outside. I will telephone down to say that you are to use it. Change into your evening clothes and come back for me. I want you to take me out to supper.”
He looked at her in amazement. She stamped her foot.
“Don't stand there hesitating!” she ordered. “Do as I say! You don't expect I am going to help you to buy your wretched property if you refuse me the simplest of favors? Hurry, I say! Hurry!”
“I am really very sorry,” Tavernake interposed, “but I do not possess a dress suit. I would go, with pleasure, but I haven't got such a thing.”
She looked at him for a moment incredulously. Then she broke into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. She sat down upon the edge of a couch and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Oh, you strange, you wonderful person!” she exclaimed. “You want to buy an estate and you want to borrow twelve thousand pounds, and you know where Beatrice is and you won't tell me, and you are fully convinced, because you burst into a house through the wall, that you saved poor Pritchard from being poisoned, and you don't possess a dress suit! Never mind, as it happens it doesn't matter about the dress suit. You shall take me out as you are.”
Tavernake felt in his pockets and remembered that he had only thirty shillings with him.
“Here, carry my purse,” she said carelessly. “We are going downstairs to the smaller restaurant. I have been traveling since six o'clock, and I am starving.”
“But how about my clothes?” Tavernake objected. “Will they be all right?”
“It doesn't matter where we are going,” she answered. “You look very well as you are. Come and let me put your tie straight.”