“Was there nothing else you noticed about him? I’m in luck’s way to have hit off such an observant person as yourself,” said Fayre with a smile.
“I was always one to take an interest in things and, what with so many coming in and out here, you find yourself wondering about them. I do remember one thing, now you mention it: his hands. He took off his gloves to pay the bill, and I noticed how thin they were and yet how strong-looking. I was in the manicure before I married and I suppose that’s why I’m such a one to notice hands. My husband’s always laughing at me about it. I said something about it at supper that night and I remember them all laughing.”
“Quite true,” put in her husband. “I remember it now. It’s always been a joke of ours, but we chaffed her a lot that night about one thing and another and that was one of them. There was another joke Lotty had that night, too, about a bottle. Do you remember?”
“Rather! That was that particular man, too. When he turned away from the desk his coat swung against the corner and something heavy came an awful thump up against the wood. Lotty said: ‘Well, he’s got his little drop of comfort with him, anyway,’ meaning it sounded like a bottle. That was what she was laughing over at supper. She was always one for a joke and she’ll make one over anything.”
“Well, thanks to you, I’ve got some idea what the chap was like and he may be the one my friend’s after. Page by name, tall and thin, with a bottle in his pocket! And if my friend can find him he may get the money for his broken lamp out of him! It doesn’t sound a hopeful prospect, does it! I’m deeply grateful to you, all the same. I wish everybody had a memory like yours!”
“I’m sorry about that number,” she said regretfully. “It isn’t often I forget, but I must have been taken up with my sister.”
Fayre rode back to Staveley very much divided in his mind between the mysterious Mr. Page and Gregg. Of the two, he was inclined to suspect the doctor, who seemed to be getting more and more involved in the whole business and for whose brains he had already conceived a wholesome respect. The other man was probably nothing but a harmless motorist who wanted his car badly enough to brave the weather and fetch it.
He found Cynthia writing letters in the drawing-room and gave her a short account of his visit to the garage.
She fastened onto the Page episode with an enthusiasm Fayre found pathetic. He told her frankly that he considered it of minor importance.
“You must remember that there may have been any number of people fetching their cars from garages just about that time. It isn’t as if we’d been able to trace the number of the car. There is nothing except its size that answers to the carter’s description.”