The lady was unfeignedly pleased. She arranged to call for him in her brougham within twenty minutes, and Bruce hurried off to Victoria Street in a hansom to dress for this unexpected branch of the detective business.
When he told his valet to telephone to the restaurant and the theatre respectively for a reserved table and a couple of stalls, that worthy chuckled.
When his master entered a brougham in which was seated a fur-wrapped lady, the valet grinned broadly. “I knew it,” he said. “The guv’nor’s on the mash. Now, who would ever have thought it of him?”
CHAPTER V
AT THE JOLLITY THEATRE
By tacit consent, Claude and his fair companion dropped for the hour the rôles of inquisitor and witness.
They were both excellent talkers, they were mutually interested, and there was in their present escapade a spice of that romance not so lacking in the humdrum life of London as is generally supposed to be the case.
Bruce did not ask himself what tangible result he expected from this quaint outcome of his visit to Sloane Square. It was too soon yet. He must trust to the vagaries of chance to elucidate many things now hidden. Meanwhile a good dinner, a bright theatre, and the society of a smart, nice-looking woman, were more than tolerable substitutes for progress.