Reggie shook his head. “You will be so respectable, Lomas my child. It hampers you.”
“Well, go and drag the river,” said Lomas with a shrug, “and see who finds her first.”
Mr. Fortune, who has a gentle nature, does not like people to be cross to him. This was his defence when Lomas subsequently complained of his independent action. He went to lunch and afterwards returned to his house by the river.
Swaying in a hammock under the syringa he considered the Sheridan case without prejudice, and drowsily came to the conclusion that he believed in nothing and nobody. He was not satisfied with the bag, he was not satisfied with the pallid woe of Rose Darcourt, he was not satisfied with the manager and the playwright, he was by no means satisfied with the flippancy of Lomas and the grim zeal of Bell. It appeared to him that all were unreasonable. He worked upon his memories of Rose Darcourt and Sylvia Sheridan and found no help therein. The two ladies, though competent upon the stage and at times agreeable, were to him commonplace. And whatever the case was, it was not that. He could not relate them to the floating bag, and the story of jealousy and the disappearance. “This thing’s all out of joint,” he sighed, “and I don’t think the airy Lomas or the gloomy Bell is the man to put it right. Why will people have theories? And at their time of life too! It’s not decent.” He rang (in his immoral garden you can ring from the pergola and ring from the hammocks and the lawn) for his chauffeur and factotum, Sam.
Mr. Samuel Smith was born a small and perky Cockney. He is, according to Reggie, a middle-class chauffeur but otherwise a lad of parts, having a peculiarly neat hand with photography and wine. But a capacity for being all things to all men was what first recommended him. “Sam,” said Mr. Fortune, “do you go much into society?”
“Meaning the locals, sir?”
“That was the idea.”
“Well, sir, they’re not brainy. Too much o’ the nouveau riche.”
“It’s a hard world, Sam. I want to know about Miss Darcourt’s servants. I wouldn’t mind knowing about Miss Sheridan’s servants. They ought to be talking things over. Somebody may be saying something interesting—or doing something.”
“I’ve got it, sir. Can do.”