Mrs Carruthers was highly perplexed. Why, she wondered, if Blanche had gone away with Arnott should she have joined a troupe of strolling singers? And if she had not gone away with Arnott, why was he in Johannesburg at the same time?
Carruthers could not explain this also as a coincidence. He did not attempt to. He remarked that it looked fishy, and asked his wife if she intended to inform Pamela. Mrs Carruthers was undecided.
“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. “I think I’ll write to George, and tell him to find out what he can about them. It will be necessary to explain certain things to him; I am sorry to be obliged to do that.”
“Why?” inquired Carruthers.
She looked at him for a moment uncertainly. Dickie was a well-meaning person, but he was not astute. She possessed a beautiful contempt for his perspicacity.
“George admires Pamela,” she said.
Carruthers received this intelligence unmoved.
“He would be a little unusual if he didn’t,” he returned. “I don’t see why that fact should make you hesitate to enlist his services; it’s much more likely to make him of use. Dare is cut out for the rôle of knight to distressed beauty; it suits his proportions; a stout man looks absurd in the cast.”
Mrs Carruthers showed impatience.
“If you can’t help, don’t make fatuous remarks,” she said. “George takes it too seriously. We don’t want to complicate the present muddle. If I felt that he might make a fool of himself over this business I would sooner bite out my tongue than inform him.”