[6] Sic throughout. A more experienced novelist would doubtless have omitted the “the.” (Lit. Exec.)
And then the train had pulled out in its ruthless way, almost before he had time to find his way to the door of the reserved Pullman saloon-car, heavy with the scent of the winter-roses he had ordered to be sent from Selfridge’s that morning. How poignant was their sweetness amid the smoke and bustle and jangle of the mammoth terminus!
Gaveston drove the Panhard (it was his favourite) back to Half Moon Street. Already the posters of the evening papers were sprawling in the muddy gutters and flapping in the rain-soaked wind——
PENHALIGON CASE: RESULT.
How sad it all really was, he reflected, beneath the glittering surface, and how nerve-racking those months between the nisi and the absolute. Poor Mums.… Was it rain on the wind-screen that dimmed his view of the lighted street as the great Panhard purred down the Edgware Road, or.… He brushed his eyes, and opened the throttle wider.…
He picked up his suit-cases at the house, and drove round without delay to the Albany Yard.
“Sir Wilkinson ffoulis?” he asked the porter.
“C, sir,” came the answer, “on your right, if you please.”
And C, The Albany, was to be Gav’s address for the rest of this vacation.
Gaveston took care only to meet people of whose peculiarness and uniquity he could be proud, and so he always felt a properly nepotal affection for Sir Wilkinson ffoulis, K.V.O. A diplomat, now retired, he had been en poste at Reijkavik, Quito, Adis Ababa, and Cayenne. “And after that,” the veteran would say, casting up his eyes to the Angelica Kauffmann ceiling of the St. James’s Club, “I was fifteen months en disponibilité, pressin’ my claims to a chargéship in Pesth or Janeiro. They offered me Albania. I preferred the Albany.”