“Two letters. I picked ’em up at Wheatley Post Office this morning. You know he hadn’t done with that butler. Actually got out of his place and scruffed the poor devil at lunch. Shook him like a rat, she says. Said the man wasn’t giving him anything to drink—nice story, eh? Anyhow he scruffed him until things got broken....
“I had it all from Minnie Timbre—you know, used to be Minnie Flax.” He shot a propitiating glance at Madeleine. “Used to be neighbours of ours, you know, in the old time. Half the people, she says, didn’t know what was happening. Thought the butler was apoplectic and that old Moggeridge was helping him stand up. Taking off his collar. It was Laxton thought of saying it was a fit. Told everybody, she says. Had to tell ’em Something, I suppose. But she saw better and she thinks a good many others did. Laxton ran ’em both out of the room. Nice scene for Shonts, eh? Thundering awkward for poor Lucy. Not the sort of thing the county expected. Has her both ways. Can’t go to a house where the Lord Chancellor goes mad. One alternative. Can’t go to a house where the butler has fits. That’s the other. See the dilemma?...”
“I’ve got a letter from Lucy, too. It’s here”—he struggled—“See? Eight sheets—pencil. No Joke for a man to read that. And she writes worse than any decent self-respecting illiterate woman has a right to do. Quivers. Like writing in a train. Can’t read half of it. But she’s got something about a boy on her mind. Mad about a boy. Have I taken away a boy? They’ve lost a boy. Took him in my luggage, I suppose. She’d better write to the Lord Chancellor. Likely as not he met him in some odd corner and flew at him. Smashed him to atoms. Dispersed him. Anyhow they’ve lost a boy.”
He protested to the world. “I can’t go hunting lost boys for Lucy. I’ve done enough coming away as I did....”
Mrs. Bowles held out an arresting cigarette.
“What sort of boy was lost?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Some little beast of a boy. I daresay she’d only imagined it. Whole thing been too much for her.”
“Read that over again,” said Mrs. Bowles, “about losing a boy. We’ve found one.”
“That little chap?”
“We found that boy”—she glanced over her shoulder, but Bealby was nowhere to be seen—“on Sunday morning near Shonts. He strayed into us like a lost kitten.”