"Splendid," agreed Mark. "Stuffing 'em up with coloured water and ginger pills and making fifteen hundred a year out of the poor blighters for doing it." He smiled with a cheerful good nature that was rather out of keeping with his words. "I'm not envious, Colin. I'm only too delighted to know that you've found the right opening. Two or three years' experience with Carter will be simply invaluable to you. It will put you in the very front rank of investigators, and what's more, it will give you the opportunity of carrying on his work after he's dead. You'll be a great man before you've finished. When I'm an old buffer of eighty I shall probably go around bragging that the famous Sir Colin Gray was once my junior house surgeon at Bart's."
"Always supposing," added the future celebrity, "that I'm not knocked on the head by a burglar." He rolled up a bread pill and eyed his host meditatively. "It's a rummy affair, the whole business," he continued. "I wonder if there's anything behind it? D'you think Carter's just got the wind up, or d'you think he's one of those old juggins who keeps thousands of pounds buried in the back cellar?"
Mark shrugged his shoulders. "Goodness knows," he replied. "Anyhow, he ought to be safe enough with you. If I were a self-respecting burglar with a proper regard for my appearance I should give the Red Lodge a devilish wide berth. I know that right upper-cut of yours; I've had some of it."
The appearance of the grouse at this point created a temporary diversion, and it was not until lunch was finished, and the two of them were sitting over their coffee and cigars, that Mark returned to his original subject.
"You won't forget, will you," he said, "if you run across a likely damsel. I shall be absolutely in the soup unless I get hold of somebody the next day or two."
"I'll do my best for you," Colin assured him. "I'll have a general inspection of all the nurses at the hospital to-morrow morning, and if there's a stray angel amongst them I'll send her along. I shouldn't bank on it though, not from what I remember of them."
Mark pulled out his note case and beckoned to the waiter.
"I must be off," he observed resentfully. "Which way are you going—back to the hospital?"
Colin shook his head. "This is my day out. I shall roll along to the garage and spend a nice messy afternoon tinkering at the car. There are several odd jobs that want doing, and I should like to get them cleared off before I start chasing burglars."
Mark paid the bill, and, leaving the restaurant, the two friends walked together as far as Charing Cross Underground, where they came to a halt on the bridge inside the barrier.