“My dear Doc,” he said, “aren’t you going a bit fast? Parrish is a very good chap, but one knows nothing about him ...”
Sagely the doctor nodded his grizzled head.
“That’s true,” he agreed. “He appears to have no relatives and nobody over here seems to have heard of him before the war. A man was saying at the Athenaeum the other day ...”
Trevert touched his elbow. Bude had appeared, portly, imperturbable, bearing a silver tray set out with the appliances for tea.
“Bude,” cried Trevert, “don’t tell me there are no tea-cakes again!”
“On the contrairey, sir,” answered the butler in the richly sonorous voice pitched a little below the normal register which he employed abovestairs, “the cook has had her attention drawn to it. There are tea-cakes, sir!”
With a certain dramatic effect—for Bude was a trifle theatrical in everything he did—he whipped the cover off a dish and displayed a smoking pile of deliciously browned scones.
“Bude,” said Trevert, “when I’m a Field Marshal, I’ll see you get the O.B.E. for this!”
The butler smiled a nicely regulated three-by-one smile, a little deprecatory as was his wont. Then, like a tank taking a corner, he wheeled majestically and turned to cross the lounge. To reach the green baize door leading to the servants’ quarters he had to cross the outer hall from which led corridors on the right and left. That on the right led to the billiard-room; that on the left to the big drawing-room with the library beyond.
As Bude reached the great screen of tooled Spanish leather which separated a corner of the lounge from the outer hall, Robin Greve came hastily through the glass door of the corridor leading from the billiard-room. The butler with a pleasant smile drew back a little to allow the young man to pass, thinking he was going into the lounge for tea.