“Very good, sir. You may leave the matter in my hands with complete confidence.”
The drawing-room into which I was shown on arriving at Thurloe Square was filled with many mementoes of the late Sir Rupert’s gubernatorial career. In addition the room contained a small and bewilderingly pretty girl in a blue dress, who smiled upon me pleasantly.
“My aunt will be down in a moment,” she said, and for a few moments we exchanged commonplaces. Then the door opened and Lady Lakenheath appeared.
The widow of the Administrator was tall, angular, and thin, with a sun-tanned face of a cast so determined as to make it seem a tenable theory that in the years previous to 1906 she had done at least her share of the administrating. Her whole appearance was that of a woman designed by Nature to instil law and order into the bosoms of boisterous cannibal kings. She surveyed me with an appraising glance, and then, as if reconciled to the fact that, poor specimen though I might be, I was probably as good as anything else that could be got for the money, received me into the fold by pressing the bell and ordering tea.
Tea had arrived, and I was trying to combine bright dialogue with the difficult feat of balancing my cup on the smallest saucer I had ever seen, when my hostess, happening to glance out of window into the street below, uttered something midway between a sigh and a click of the tongue.
“Oh, dear! That extraordinary man again!”
The girl in the blue dress, who had declined tea and was sewing in a distant corner, bent a little closer over her work.
“Millie!” said the administratress, plaintively, as if desiring sympathy in her trouble.
“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“That man is calling again!”