“Well, there you have me,” he confessed. “Like Ben—are you acquainted with Ben?—I dunno! That’s why I’m here.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Do you mean that Brean has gone away? But why should you take his place? Are you doing it for a wager?”
“No, but now that you come to suggest it I see that that might not be at all a bad notion,” he said..
“I wish you will be serious!” she begged, trying to frown and succeeding only in laughing.
“I am very serious. On the whole, I believe I shall do better to announce myself to be a cousin of Brean’s.”
“No one would credit such a tale, I assure you!”
“Don’t you think so? I can talk cant with the best, you know.”
She made a despairing gesture. “I don’t understand a word of this!”
The groom, who had been staring very hard at John, said: “Seems to me there’s something smoky going on here. If you ain’t playing a May-game, sir; nor cutting a sham—”
“I’m not, but I agree with you that there’s something smoky going on,” John interrupted. “The gatekeeper went off two nights ago, and hasn’t been seen since.”