“We’ll forestall him,” said Lord Manton. “He can’t possibly get here before noon. We’ll start at eleven A.M. sharp. We’ll have the mystery, whatever it is, probed to its inmost recesses before he gets at it. The whole credit will be yours, Goddard.”
“I’ll make any one that likes a present of the credit.”
“In the meanwhile,” said Lord Manton, “you’d better sleep here. I expect Jimmy O’Loughlin’s hotel is pretty well full up.”
“Thanks,” said Mr. Goddard. “The fact is, I don’t particularly care about going back to the village to-night.”
“Will they be waiting up for you?”
“They will.”
“Miss Blow,” said Lord Manton, “is a wonderful woman.”
“She’s not bad looking,” said Mr. Goddard magnanimously, “but she’s rather——”
“I know what you’re going to say—vehement, wasn’t that it? A good deal of life force about her? I quite agree with you. Now, what do you think? Supposing it turns out that the man Red has really been up to any kind of tricks; supposing he’s engaged in a business of kidnapping dispensary doctors, blacksmiths, Members of Parliament and policemen, for the purpose of shipping them off as slaves to the Sultan of Zanzibar. I don’t say for certain that that’s exactly what he’s doing. I don’t know yet. But if he’s at anything of the sort it would serve him jolly well right if we made him marry Miss Blow.”
“He wouldn’t do it.”