"Oh, it's all right," I answered, and I expect I looked about as big an ass as I felt. "That is—er—a little contrivance of my own. By the way, you fellows must keep it absolutely dark."
To say that they watched me with interest is to put it mildly. I withdrew "Our House Telephone, Not a Toy, 27s. 6d. net" from its hiding place. Doris was speaking. She knew that my brother had come and she was dying to meet him. Old Mrs. Gaunt was sleeping peacefully; in fact I fear, so prone are all of us to error, that Doris had administered just twice the amount of opiate that the doctor had prescribed.
Doris suggested that she and Marjorie should come at once to my room. They also suggested that we should dine there, with the connivance of a friendly housemaid. I told her to hold the line for a minute, and explained.
My brother's face lost all preoccupation. He was a naval officer, you will remember, and, though a distinguished one, was as young gentlemen in that Service usually are in both age and inclination.
"Can a duck swim?" said my brother.
"Well, I'll go," Lockhart remarked, with just a trace of his old bitterness.
"You sit where you are, old soul," I told him. "Bernard, both the girls are only stepdaughters of the Doctor, who, they have told me, did not treat their mother very well and who is a perfect tyrant to them. They're as true as steel; I can answer for them. They will be of tremendous help."
"Leave it all to me," he replied. "I am skipper of this from now onwards. You follow my lead."
A minute or two afterwards the girls came in. Doris, as I have already explained, was as pretty as Venus, Cleopatra, and Gertie Millar all in one, and she only beat Marjorie by a short head. All the other girls I've ever met were simply "also ran."
Marjorie's hair was black. She was a brunette with olive-coloured skin and green eyes, like very dark, clear emeralds. She was extraordinarily lovely. Indeed, all three of us had seriously considered starting a picture postcard firm, with the girls as models and I to manage it, so that Doris and I could get married and have Marjorie to live with us. Rather a good scheme, only it would have needed at least two hundred pounds capital, which we hadn't got! Doris had on her engagement ring, which she generally wore on a string round her neck, underneath her blouse. I had put thirty shillings each way on "Baby Mine" for the Grand National and it had come off—hence the ring.