“And the second for me!” joined in Robert.
“Mr. Brett,” said Margaret, “don’t you consider this competition perfectly disgraceful?”
“I am overjoyed,” he replied. “It appears to me that the result must be personally most satisfactory.”
“In what way?”
“It is obvious that you have no resource but to accept my willing slavery, Miss Layton having monopolised the attentions of your two cousins.”
“Hello!” cried Frazer. “This is an unexpected attack. Miss Layton, I resign. Have no fear. In the darkest corridor I will warn you that my name is ‘Robert.’”
Though the words were carelessly good-humoured, they were just a trifle emphatic. The incident passed, but they recalled it subsequently under very different circumstances.
Brett went home about ten o’clock. Next day at noon he was arranging for the immediate delivery of a type-writer machine, sold by Mr. Numagawa Jiro to a West End exchange, when a telegram reached him:
“Come at once. Urgent.—HUME.”
He drove to the hotel, where David and Helen were sitting in the foyer awaiting his arrival.