'Wow!' shouted James.
'What?' asked the girl, startled.
'Touch of cramp,' said James. He was thrilling all over. That wild hope had been realized.
'It was daddy's dying wish that we should marry,' said the girl.
'And dashed sensible of him, too; dashed sensible,' said James warmly.
'And yet,' she went on, a little wistfully, 'I sometimes wonder—'
'Don't!' said James. 'Don't! You must respect daddy's dying wish. There's nothing like daddy's dying wish; you can't beat it. So he's coming here tomorrow, is he? Capital, capital. To lunch, I suppose? Excellent! I'll run down and tell Mrs Who-Is-It to lay in another chop.'
It was with a gay and uplifted heart that James strolled the garden and smoked his pipe next morning. A great cloud seemed to have rolled itself away from him. Everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. He had finished The Secret Nine and shipped it off to Mr McKinnon, and now as he strolled there was shaping itself in his mind a corking plot about a man with only half a face who lived in a secret den and terrorized London with a series of shocking murders. And what made them so shocking was the fact that each of the victims, when discovered, was found to have only half a face too. The rest had been chipped off, presumably by some blunt instrument.
The thing was coming out magnificently, when suddenly his attention was diverted by a piercing scream. Out of the bushes fringing the river that ran beside the garden burst the apple-cheeked housekeeper.
'Oh, sir! Oh, sir! Oh, sir!'