“She’s here, is she?” Captain Newton glanced at the laboratory door. “You’re not going to send that wire? ‘Miss Mirabelle Leicester!’ ‘Expeditiously return!’ She’d tumble it in a minute. Who is Alma Goddard?”
“The aunt,” said Oberzohn. “I did not intend the dispatching until you had seen it. My English is too correct.”
He made way for Captain Newton, who, having taken a sheet of paper from the rack on which to deposit with great care his silk hat, and having stripped his gloves and deposited them in his hat, sat down in the chair from which the older man had risen, pulled up the knees of his immaculate trousers, tore off the top telegraph form, and wrote under the address:
“Have got the job. Hooray! Don’t bother to come up, darling, until I am settled. Shall sleep at the flat as usual. Too busy to write. Keep my letters.—Mirabelle.”
“That’s real,” said Captain Newton, surveying his work with satisfaction. “Push it off.”
He got up and straddled his legs before the fire.
“The hard part of the job may be to persuade the lady to come to Chester Square,” he said.
“My own little house——” began Oberzohn.
“Would scare her to death,” said Newton with a loud laugh. “That dog-kennel! No, it is Chester Square or nothing. I’ll get Joan or one of the girls to drop in this afternoon and chum up with her. When does the Benguella arrive?”
“This afternoon: the person has booked rooms by radio at the Petworth Hotel.”