“Gone to London, sir, by the 10.5. He damned me for the last time half an hour ago.”
“Oh, did he?”
Medenham glanced at his watch, twisted himself free of the wheel, leaped to the pavement, and tapped one of the hall-porter’s gold epaulettes impressively.
“I am forced to believe that you are speaking the truth,” he said. “Now, tell me all about it, there’s a good fellow. I am a bit rattled, because, don’t you see, Lord Fairholme is my father, and he is the last man on earth whom I would have expected to meet in Hereford to-day. During the less exciting intervals in his speech did you find out why he came here?”
“Perhaps the manageress may be able to tell you something, sir. Beg pardon, but may I ask your name?”
“Medenham.”
The man tickled the back of his ear in doubt, since he was aware that an Earl’s son usually has a courtesy title.
“Lord Medenham?” he hazarded.
“Viscount.”
“I thought, perhaps, you might have been a gentleman named Fitzroy, my lord,” he said.