THE unwelcome discovery of the perfidy of Chimp Twist had been made by Mr. Molloy and his bride at about twenty minutes past four. At 4:30 a natty two-seater car drew up at the gate of San Rafael and Willoughby Braddock alighted. Driving aimlessly about the streets of London some forty minutes earlier, and feeling rather at a loose end, it had occurred to him that a pleasant way of passing the evening would be to go down to Valley Fields and get Kay to give him a cup of tea.
Mr. Braddock was in a mood of the serenest happiness. And if this seems strange, seeing that only recently he had had a proposal of marriage rejected, it should be explained that he had regretted that hasty proposal within two seconds of dropping the letter in the letter box. And he had come to the conclusion that, much as he liked Kay, what had induced him to offer her his hand and heart had been the fact that he had had a good deal of champagne at dinner and that its after effects had consisted of a sort of wistful melancholy which had removed for the time his fundamental distaste for matrimony. He did not want matrimony; he wanted adventure. He had not yet entirely abandoned hope that some miracle might occur to remove Mrs. Lippett from the scheme of things; and when that happened, he wished to be free.
Yes, felt Willoughby Braddock, everything had turned out extremely well. He pushed open the gate of San Rafael with the debonair flourish of a man without entanglements. As he did so, the front door opened and Mr. Wrenn came out.
“Oh, hullo,” said Mr. Braddock. “Kay in?”
“I am afraid not,” said Mr. Wrenn. “She has gone to the theatre.” Politeness to a visitor wrestled with the itch to be away. “I fear I have an engagement also, for which I am already a little late. I promised Cornelius——”
“That’s all right. I’ll go in next door and have a chat with Sam Shotter.”
“He has gone to the theatre with Kay.”
“A washout, in short,” said Mr. Braddock with undiminished cheerfulness. “Right-ho! Then I’ll pop.”
“But, my dear fellow, you mustn’t run away like this,” said Mr. Wrenn with remorse. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea and wait for Kay? Claire will bring you some if you ring.”
“Something in that,” agreed Mr. Braddock. “Sound, very sound.”