“Yes. We’ve met Jimmy before—haven’t we, Sylvia?”
“He used to be an acquaintance of ours in London,” corroborated Sylvia imperturbably, delicately underlining the word acquaintance.
Toby probed me with a peculiar look, suddenly almost hostile. I could guess that he was asking himself whether I had come to Southbeach in pursuit of Sylvia. One did not need to be a detective to discover his own eager interest in her. It was patent, with no attempt at concealment. Those strange hungry restless eyes of his seemed to devour her. Quite apart from any personal feelings—any time during the last six months I could have assured you, with perfect sincerity, that my heart was stone dead,—I didn’t like it. Toby was not the sort of chap—
But I had no opportunity to intervene. Mr. and Mrs. Bryant, with a genuine kindly interest in me and my doings that at any other time I should have appreciated, monopolized me. And Sylvia flirted with him, demurely but outrageously. She called him Toby with the most natural ease in the world. He, poor devil, was awkward in an uncertainty whether she were playing with him, jerkily spasmodic in his answers, devouring her all the time with those strange eyes of his, wherein I recognized that same caged-animal look familiar to me as a preliminary to an outburst of “mad dog” on those nights when there was ragging in the mess. She, I could see, was enjoying herself at playing with fire.
At last I could stand it no longer. I switched off from the amiable platitudes I was exchanging with her parents, interrupted her in her markedly exclusive conversation with him.
“I didn’t know Toby was a friend of yours, Syl—Miss Bryant,” I said.
She turned candid eyes upon me.
“Oh, yes, we have known Toby quite a long time—soon after you dropped us—nearly six months, isn’t it, Toby?”
She took, evidently, a malicious pleasure in reiterating his Christian name. I messed up the end of my cigarette before I remembered not to chew it. Toby looked up suspiciously.