Lucky!
“Wish I had been out of town,” I said gloomily. “It’s a ghastly affair.”
“Get out! Ghastly!” he ejaculated with scorn. “Nothing’s ghastly to a journalist, so long as it’s good copy! You ought to have forgotten you ever possessed any nerves, long ago. Must say you look a bit off color, though. Have a drink?”
I declined with thanks. His idea of a drink in office hours, was, as I knew, some vile whiskey fetched from the nearest “pub,” diluted with warm, flat soda, and innocent of ice. I’d wait till I got to Chelsea, where I was bound to happen on something drinkable. As a good American, Mary scored off the ordinary British housewife, who preserves a fixed idea that ice is a sinful luxury, even during a spell of sultry summer weather in London.
I drove from the office to Chelsea, and found Mary and Jim, with two or three others, sitting in the garden. The house was one of the few old-fashioned ones left in that suburb, redolent of many memories and associations of witty and famous folk, from Nell Gwynn to Thomas Carlyle; and Mary was quite proud of her garden, though it consisted merely of a small lawn and some fine old trees that shut off the neighboring houses.
“At last! You very bad boy. We expected you to tea,” said Mary, as I came down the steps of the little piazza outside the drawing-room windows. “You don’t mean to tell me you’ve been packing all this time? Why, goodness, Maurice; you look worse than you did this morning! You haven’t been committing a murder, have you?”
“No, but I’ve been discovering one,” I said lamely, as I dropped into a wicker chair.
“A murder! How thrilling. Do tell us all about it,” cried a pretty, kittenish little woman whose name I did not know. Strange how some women have an absolutely ghoulish taste for horrors!
“Give him a chance, Mrs. Vereker,” interposed Jim hastily, with his accustomed good nature. “He hasn’t had a drink yet. Moselle cup, Maurice, or a long peg?”