“Tell him to go to the devil, with my compliments, and to come to my office if he really has business with me!” thundered Fair, not at all like himself.
Baxter shook his head as he said: “Very good, sir,” and toddled downstairs, putting two and two together as servants will in the best regulated families.
The furniture seemed to be all out of place, so Fair pulled it this way and that, but wherever he placed it, it still seemed, to his mind, to show that a scuffle had taken place. After abandoning the idea of getting it to look right, he devoted his anxious attention to his own appearance, which, although his faultless evening attire was immaculate and his thin, brown hair, with a touch of gray, was smooth and precise, seemed to him to betray the fact that he had passed through a scene of some sort. Giving up the effort to discover just what was wrong, he unlocked the doors, drew his chair to the table and toyed with a pen and some sheets of paper on which he began several times to write.
“Maxwell Fair, old chap,” he said to himself, looking up at the ceiling, “this is pretty well near the end—but it’s all in the day’s work.”
Then he dashed off two telegrams and rang the bell, which Baxter promptly answered, having been standing at the door. “Did you ring, sir?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Fair. “Here, see that these two telegrams are sent immediately—but wait. Baxter, a gentleman called about twenty minutes ago. Did you let him in?”
He watched the old man’s face closely as he replied: “Yes, sir. A dark, foreign-looking gentleman, sir.”
“Yes,” went on Fair, picking up the evening paper carelessly and speaking with great indifference; “he is in my study. Just fetch his coat and hat here, will you? And, by the way, did any of the other servants see him?”
“The gentleman said he was an old friend of my lady’s—and none of the other servants saw him, sir. Aren’t you well, sir? I hope that nothing has occurred, sir,” answered Baxter, with an old servant’s liberty.
“No,” snapped Fair, with irritation, but going on more in his usual way. “Now look sharp and fetch the gentleman’s coat. A very old friend of Mrs. Fair’s. What was the other chap like—the one who wished to see me?”