“As you like.” May drew out his watch. “It’s after nine,” he added, “if we are going to the Casino we had better be t-toddling.”
On the way there May entered a tobacconist’s, and Lenox waited for him without. As he loitered on the curb, Blydenburg rounded an adjacent corner.
“Well,” exclaimed the latter, “you didn’t see our friends off.”
“What friends?”
“The Incouls of course; didn’t you know that they had gone?”
Lenox looked at him blankly. “Gone,” he echoed.
“Yes, they must have sent you word. Incoul seemed to expect you. They have gone up to Paris. If I had known beforehand—”
Mr. Blydenburg rambled on, but Lenox no longer listened. It was for this then that he had been bothering himself the entire day. The abruptness of the departure mystified him, yet he comforted himself with the thought that had there been anything abnormal, it could not have escaped Blydenburg’s attention.
“And you say they expected me?” he asked at last.