"Of course," he said, "if you really want him I might be able to secure him."
Jimmy, after looking hard at Linker's totally expressionless face, turned away and whistled softly.
Chapter XIII
The interview with Linker dragged itself to an end at last and the man bowed himself out of the room. Sir Evelyn took the two girls out to his rock garden and enjoyed himself. He had long been cut off from the society of cheerful and pretty young women who wanted to be agreeable to him and were clever enough to show an interest, which no one under fifty can really feel, in the names and nature of unattractive plants. Sir Evelyn, though old enough to enjoy rock plants, was not too old to enjoy pretty girls. A happy position and rare, for as a rule rock plants only become interesting after pretty girls have ceased to attract.
Jimmy settled down for an hour's serious work in the butler's pantry where the Manor House telephone was kept. He began with the proprietor of the garage in Morriton St. James, went into all the symptoms of the Pallas Athene's breakdown, found that a diagnosis had been made and that a major operation would be required. There was little hope of the car running again for a week. After that he tried a trunk call to the office of the makers of the car. This was a difficult thing to procure but he did it in the end and had the satisfaction of telling a gentleman, described to him as "the boss" exactly what sort of car the Pallas Athene was. "The boss" retaliated by describing in vivid terms the kind of man who was fool enough to drive a perfectly new car, which had never been run in, at the rate of sixty miles an hour for several hundred miles.
He had no direct evidence that the Pallas Athene had been driven in this way, but he knew something of Jimmy's reputation as a motorist, and he felt quite safe in making the accusation.
It is creditable to Jimmy that he kept his temper during both conversations. The garage proprietor kept his and the "boss" only pretended to be angry as a means of self-defence against any claim which might be made on him under the terms of his guarantee. Considering how trying motor cars can be when they choose to behave badly this general self-restraint goes far to show that we are really becoming a civilised people, a thing which observers of our habit of going on strike might be inclined to doubt.
When Sir Evelyn and the two girls returned from the rock garden Jimmy told them the news that there was no chance of getting away in the Pallas Athene. He spoke indecisively about trains and still more doubtfully about hiring another car. Sir Evelyn cut him short with a hospitable invitation to the whole party to stay with him for a week or a fortnight, until the Pallas Athene was repaired, or perhaps until the Hailey Compton pageant was over.
Beth murmured a polite refusal which it was quite clear she did not really mean. Pressed by Sir Evelyn she confessed that gossip about London society can be invented anywhere and that the Lispings of Lilith could be just as well written in the Manor House at Morriton St. James as in the flat in Battersea. She also said something about an opportunity for visiting her aunt at Hailey Compton. Sir Evelyn cut her short.
"You will be doing me a favour," he said, "by staying on till the pageant is over. I want someone to help me through with that affair."