To me he seemed one of those wealthy, rather faddy men whom one encounters sometimes in the best hotels, men who move up and down the country aimlessly during the spring and summer and in winter go abroad for a few months; men with piles of well-battered and be-labelled baggage whose home is always in hotels and whose chief object in life is to dress in the fashion of the younger generation, to be seen everywhere, to give cosy little luncheon and dinner-parties, and be the “fairy” uncle of any pretty girl they may come across.
We have lots of such in England to-day. Ask the chef-de-réception of any of our smartest hotels, and they will reel off the names of half a dozen or so elderly bachelors, widowers or wife-quarrelers with huge incomes who prefer to pass along the line of least resistance in domesticity—the private suite in an up-to-date hotel.
Mr. Gordon Lloyd was one of such, and it seemed that Rudolph Rayne, who now treated me with the greatest intimacy because he saw that he had drawn me so completely into his net, had become his dearest friend.
On the night when the last guest had departed I sat with the pair over the port, after Lola and Madame had left the dinner-table.
“Really,” said the merry old gentleman with his glass of ’74 poised in his hand, “I don’t know whether I shall go back to Colwyn Bay again this winter—or go abroad. I’ve no ties, and I’m getting fed up. I haven’t been abroad since the war.”
“Go abroad, my dear fellow,” said Rayne. “The change would certainly do you good—go somewhere in the south. The Riviera is played out. Why not go to Sicily?”
“I’ve been there,” replied old Mr. Lloyd as he sipped his glass of fine wine.
“Then why not try Italy? Glorious bright weather all through our foggy season—Rome or Florence, for instance?”
“No, I hate Italy.”