"When do you expect the detestable contrivance—I make no disguises, you see—to arrive? I shall be here for a week, if my hosts continue to tolerate me."
"It ought to be here now. From the fact that it is not here now, I am led to infer that something has happened. In this cautious expression you will kindly observe that it includes the possibility that my chauffeur, Louis Bossier, has got drunk on the road, and has stopped the night at an inn to become sober."
"Or he may have been poisoned by petroleum."
"Yes, or his head may have been cut off by a police-wire, stretched across the road in the dark. But in that case I fancy we should have heard."
When Challis descended the stairs, he paused to look out at the great window with the quarried grisaille and armorial bearings in each light, and saw through a quarry temporarily repaired with common window-glass a clear view of the approach to the house, dutifully draining off the deluge that continued to fall steadily—steadily—on the gravel road the great beech avenue took such care of, standing on each side of it all the way to just this side of the Lodge. How well he knew what that soaked gravel would have to say to the pedestrian who ventured out—what it was saying to that unhappy man in some sort of oilskin costume who was coming slowly, jadedly along, above his under-squelch and below an umbrella that can have done him very little good. Mr. Challis saw at a glance that he was not indigenous to the soil; a second glance determined that he was a Frenchman; a third that he was a chauffeur. Certainly Louis Rossier—who else? He smiled as a non-motorist smiles when a motor comes to grief. When he reached the drawing-room, Mr. Ramsey Tomes was already applying for a second cup. That gentleman was thirsty, no doubt. He had talked for two hours. Not that he meant to stop—far from it!
Challis had no one to talk to for the moment, so he listened to Mr. Tomes, who went on again as soon as he had made sure there were two lumps.
"I start from an aspect of the question that must compel the most incredulous to admit that at least the matrix is ripe for solution."
As the orator paused a moment, everyone felt bound to fructify a little, and said, "I see, you propose to ..." or, "I see your idea ..." or merely got as far as "I see you ..." and remained stranded. All except the disciple of Graubosch, who muttered knowingly, "The Brandenbierenschreiligrath System. Graubosch's Appendix B deals with it." He and Mr. Wraxall exchanged astute nods; the latter to oblige, because he really knew nothing about it. But Mr. Tomes wasn't going to leave anything vague. Not he!—a man with a fixed glare, and loaded to the muzzle with exhaustive elucidation!
Challis did not wait for the next instalment. He cast about for an anchorage, and had not found a satisfactory one when Lord Felixthorpe, who had not appeared at the beginning of Tea, came into the room with something to communicate written on his countenance.