So we rang off, and after slipping Vining’s little notebook under the blotter on my table, I went to bed, telling Larry to see that our front door was locked and the chain was up. But I did not get to sleep very quickly.
Chapter X.
Mrs. Fawcette is Indiscreet
The next morning, Friday, I woke and lay for a moment drowsily wondering as to the cause of a sort of vague excitement of which I was conscious. Then recollection of the events of the previous evening returned, and I jumped out of bed and yelled for Larry and my bath. Although it went against the grain with me, at first, Larry had quietly but firmly taken to himself the duties of valet, housemaid, cook and butler. As a general factotum he was a marvel of usefulness, but at first I had objected violently to being waited on hand and foot. Larry, however, had taken these rebuffs quite calmly and had gone his own sweet way, looking after my clothes, running my bath-water and bringing me tea in bed in the morning, and I had gradually drifted into this sort of a sybaritic existence through sheer laziness. Once or twice he had even tried to help me on with my clothes, but I had to draw the line somewhere, and he finally gave that up.
Larry came in grinning as usual. He had a small tray in his hand, with a cup of tea and some bread and butter on it. For a short time in his early career he had been valet to an Irish lordling, and old habits stuck, it seemed.
“Take that tea away, Larry,” I told him. “Is my bath ready? And what the hell do you mean by letting me sleep so late, you Irish billygoat? What time is it?”
Larry’s face fell, not at the name I called him—he was used to that—but at the fate of the tea. But he set the tray down beside the bed.
“Sure, sor, ’tis just gone eight an’ yer bath’s waiting for ye. Do but take a drop of the tay, an’——”
I reached for a book and Larry promptly dodged, grinning. “Why didn’t you wake me?” I demanded again.
“An’ why would I do that same, sor? Sure, if ’twasn’t wishful to be disturbed ye was, ’tis the whole library would ’ave come me way.”
“Well, you unmitigated scoundrel, I want breakfast in ten minutes, or you’ll answer for it,” I told him. “And after that I want to talk to you, so don’t go sneaking away to talk to your little lady friend on the next floor.”