"Of course he can!" snapped Marjorie.
"But ..." hesitated her father, again, "I don't see how ... what with the guests ... and I wouldn't have them suspect for worlds...."
And as he said this he saw out of the corner of his eye his two cousins coming back towards the house, close at hand; the elder one was gesticulating in fine fury in his new-found happiness, and the other paced sombrely fierce at the end of his torture. Before they could open the front door ...
"Oh, damn!" said Marjorie—and she nearly added "you." "I'll telephone to you from my room. I'll give you an excuse to say the Home Office is calling." And she flew upstairs.
She was safely at her telephone before the two cousins had passed the front door. She gave them time to get into her father's presence, or for her to guess, at any rate, that one of them would be in the library. Then, with the promptitude of the young and the modern, she did the trick. The basement had put her through, and the bell on the big desk rang smartly. Galton and the Professor, sitting there in the room with the Home Secretary, looked up as quickly as did their host. He was on the receiver with a nervous rapidity; and the conversation was of a simple sort which I almost blush to recall.
"Now, papa, just tell them you've got to go to town because there is a hurried summons in London. Tell them you'll be back in a couple of hours."
"Who's on?" said Lord Galton.
"Yes! Yes!" said de Bohun. "All right! Yes! The Home Office? Ah! Yes? Tell me the details," knitting his brows a little; then turning to his two cousins, "It seems they want me at Whitehall."
The Telephone: "Hurry up, papa; it's all got to be fitted in pretty damn close, you know; they've got to get the man, and he's got to be got here by this afternoon, and got somehow!"
The Home Secretary: "Ah? Yes!" Frowning, "Oh! that's serious—well! You want me at once? All right! It's Saturday afternoon you know! Is Morden there? Tell him I'll be up within the hour." Then he turned to his guests. "Yes, they want me at once, it seems. Most urgent. But they say it won't take long." He spoke into the receiver in his turn: "Do you think I can get back here by five or a little after in the car? ... Yes," turning round and nodding at his guests thoughtfully, "they say I can get back by five—or a little after, in the car. What a business it is! I have often wondered," he added sententiously as he hung up the receiver on its hook and rang the bell to order the car—"I have often wondered what makes men take office. It's a tradition," he sighed, "Some one must serve the State! But it's a weary business." All this for the benefit of his two cousins, as though they had been a public meeting. "I'll get back at once; my man can do it in forty minutes from here if he takes the cut by Muffler's Lane, and there's not much traffic after the first two hours of a Saturday afternoon."