Sir Hunter had burnt his boats.
“Very well,” said Sir Garth, rising, “I’ll look into these papers and let you have a decision within a week or two—it’ll take me a little time—I’m an old-fashioned methodical man and I don’t rush my decisions. Good-day to you, Lorne; good-day, Captain Wraile.”
“I’ll come down with you, my dear fellow—nearly my lunch time—can I persuade you to . . .” the door closed behind them and Wraile was alone. He stood for a moment in thought, then touched a handbell twice. The inner door opened and a young woman, tall, fair, and attractive, came into the room.
“Dictation, please, Miss Saverel.”
The secretary pulled a chair up to the table and opened her note-book.
“My dear Lessingham . . .”
CHAPTER IV.
The Expected Happens
One evening, about a fortnight later, Sir Garth Fratten and Leopold Hessel walked down the steps of the “Wanderers,” in St. James’s Square, of which rather large-hearted club Hessel was a member, and turned towards Waterloo Place. Fratten usually spent an hour or so at his club, or that of one of his friends, in the evening and walked home afterwards across the Park to his house in Queen Anne’s Gate. It was, in fact, the only exercise that he got in the day.
“Thanks for my tea, Leo,” said Sir Garth. “First-rate China tea it was too—I wonder where you get it?”
Hessel smiled. “That’s one of the advantages of being not too exclusive,” he said. “We’ve got members from all parts of the world and in all sorts of business; it’s rather a point of pride with us that each member who can should help the club to get the best of everything. That tea is unobtainable on the market—Rowle gets it for us, he’s a Civil Servant in Hong Kong; we’ve got more than one tea-merchant, but they can’t produce anything to touch it.”