“Only son and daughter don’t seem to trust him. Only he also is a bit Asiatic.”
“Oh, my dear Fortune——” Lomas was protesting when Colonel Osbert came.
You will find a hundred men like him on any day in the service clubs. He was small and brown and neat, even dapper, but a trifle stiff in the joints. His manner of speech was a drawl concluding with a bark.
Reggie lay back in his chair and admired the bland fluency with which Lomas said nothing in reply to the parade-ground demands of Colonel Osbert. Colonel Osbert wanted to know (if we may reduce many sentences to one) what Lomas meant by refusing him possession of Sir Arthur Dean’s papers. And Lomas continued to reply that he meant nothing in particular.
“Sudden death at Ascot—in the Royal Enclosure too,” he explained. “That’s very startling and conspicuous. The poor fellow hadn’t been ill, as far as we can learn. Naturally we have to seek for any explanation.”
So at last Osbert came out with: “What, sir, you don’t mean to say, sir—suspect foul play?”
“Oh, my dear Colonel, you wouldn’t suggest that?”
“I, sir? Never entered my head. Poor dear Arthur! A shock, sir. A blow! Getting old, of course, like the rest of us.”
“Ah, had he been failing?” said Reggie sympathetically.
“Well, well, well. We none of us grow younger, sir.” Colonel Osbert shook his head. “But upon my soul, Mr. Lomas, I don’t understand the action of your department.”