“No one knows at present, but they seem to think there was foul play.”
White as death, she turned away, listening to no more. Lal, who had just come in, was standing by the window; Dolly’s eyes sought his. “Will you go out to Petit-Fays for me?” Angela heard her say. And: “I will go wherever you wish,” Lal answered without hesitation.
XVII
THE ONE SHALL BE TAKEN
On the day after the meeting at Swanborough, Noel Farquhar walked in upon Lucian in his room and found him sitting in his shirt and trousers trying to write. It was intensely hot, and he had cast off his coat and his waistcoat and his collar, his tie and his boots, had posted open the door and flung wide the window, and hung across a string of dripping towels to keep out the sun. Nevertheless, he was mopping his brow with a dirty old penwiper-handkerchief, and his face was colourless but for its tan.
“Sit down,” he said; “sit down and let me swear at you for a bit; I’m tired of haranguing a condemned desk that doesn’t respond. What’s the matter, sonny? You look as blue as a thunder-cloud with cholera-morbus.”
“Can you listen to business or can you not?”
“Ou ay, my trusty frien’; I’ve been chasing my plot for two solid hours, and it’s clane disthracted I am. I’ve got ‘chainless’ twice on one page, and so sure as I put down that blessed word I know I’ll have to tear up the lot. There it goes!” He tore the sheets across and across and flung them at the paper-basket. “There was rather a sweet girl in it, too; I’ll use her up some day for a three-thousander. You were saying—”
“Will you come round the works with me and Charlesworth?”
“What, again? I’ve done it once this day.”
“I want to go round in the dinner-hour, while the men are out. There’s something up, I’d swear it, and Charlesworth says the same.”