“Nothing wrong at all. It’s merely a matter concerning his new ship, which lies at Plymouth, where he must go on the morning of day after tomorrow.”
Energetic as the captain’s family was, they never put in such a day and a half of nervous, capable speed in their lives before, and this included the intervening night, during which none of them slept.
By five o’clock in the afternoon everything was ship-shape, although not quite to the satisfaction of the eldest daughter, and at six Lord Stranleigh had the felicity of introducing the captain to his possessions, human and material, old and new. Then he rushed back in his motor boat, and took the train to London.
CHAPTER VIII—THE “RAJAH” GETS INTO LEGAL DIFFICULTIES
A CAB from the London terminus speedily deposited Lord Stranleigh at his favorite club in Pall Mall. Two acquaintances coming down the steps nodded to him casually, so casually that the salutation, taken in conjunction with the lack of all interest displayed in the smoking room when he entered, caused him to realize that he had never been missed, and this indifference keeps a man from becoming too conceited when he has victoriously pitted his intelligence against bears or brigands in far-away corners of the earth, and lives to tell the tale, or keep quiet about it, as the case may be. As he was attired in the ordinary business suit that had done two days’ hard duty at Southampton, he could not commit the solecism of entering the dining room. Indeed, gleaming, snowy shirt fronts were so prevalent in the smoking room itself that he experienced the unaccustomed, but rather enjoyable feeling of being a wild and woolly pioneer, who had strayed by mistake into a stronghold of fashionable civilization. The dining room being forbidden ground, Stranleigh contented himself with a couple of sandwiches and a tankard of German beer. As he partook of this frugal fare, a broad shirt front bore down upon him that reminded him of the sail of a racing yacht.
“Hello, Stranleigh,” said Sir William Grainger, the owner of the shirt front. “Remember me telling you last week that Flying Scud was sure of a place in the Maple-Durham stakes?”
“I don’t remember having received that information from you,” replied Stranleigh. “Did Flying Scud pull it off, then?”
“Pull it off? Why, the race isn’t run till tomorrow.”