“Then don’t tell him,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson said lightly. “Good-by then—and twelve to-morrow at Asprey’s.”
As Archie La Planta stepped into his car strange thoughts came to him. They were thoughts which would have astonished most of his friends, though not Stapleton or the friend whose house he had just left.
At his chambers in the Albany he rang for his servant.
“James, bring me some telegram forms,” he said as the man entered. “And where is my ‘Who’s Who’?”
For some minutes he studied a page in “Who’s Who” carefully. Then, when James reëntered with the forms, he said:
“And now I want ‘Debrett.’ Why don’t you leave my books of reference where I always put them?” he added sharply.
“Mr. Stapleton looked in this morning, sir,” the man answered, “and wanted your ‘Who’s Who’ and ‘Debrett’ in a hurry, to refer to; said he hadn’t time to go home, sir. So I let him have them and he left them on the piano.”
For some moments La Planta sat at his escritoire writing out two telegrams.
“Send these off at once, James,” he said to his servant, who stood waiting at his elbow. “Both are very important.”
Then, going over to the full-length mirror, he carefully lit a cigar in front of it, set it going, and stretched himself out in a long fauteuil with his back to the French window.