“Spandrell!” she called, for he had already turned to go. He came back, lifting his hat. They shook hands. “I’m so sorry,” she explained. “I was alone. I thought it was at least a murderer. Then I peeped through the window and saw it was you.”
Spandrell gave vent to brief and noiseless laughter. “But it might still be a murderer, even though it is me.” And he shook his knobbed stick at her with a playfulness which was, however, so dramatically like her imaginings of the genuinely homicidal article, that Elinor was made to feel quite uncomfortable.
She covered her emotion with a laugh, but decided not to ask him into the house. Standing on the doorstep she felt safer. “All the same,” she said, “it would be better to be murdered by somebody one knows than by a stranger.”
“Would it?” He looked at her; the corners of his wide weal-like mouth twitched into a curious smile. “It needs a woman to think of those refinements. But if you should ever feel like having your throat cut in a thoroughly friendly fashion …”
“My dear Spandrell!” she protested, and felt gladder than ever that she was still on the doorstep and not inside the house.
“… don’t hesitate to send for me. No matter what the inconvenience,” he laid his hand on his heart, “I’d fly to your side. Or rather to your neck.” He clicked his heels and bowed. “But tell me,” he went on in another tone, “is Philip anywhere about? I wanted him to come and dine tonight. At Sbisa’s. I’d ask you too. Only it’s a purely masculine affair.”
She thanked him. “But I couldn’t come in any case. And Philip’s gone down into the country to see his mother. And will only be back just in time for Tolley’s concert at the Queen’s Hall. But I know he said he was going round to Sbisa’s afterward, on the chance of meeting someone. You’ll see him then. Late.”
“Well, better late than never. Or at least,” he uttered another of his soundless laughs, “so one piously hopes, where one’s friends are concerned. Pious hopes! But to tell you the truth, the proverb needs changing. Better never than early.”
“Then why go to the trouble of asking people to dine?”
Spandrell shrugged his shoulders. “Force of habit,” he said. “And besides, I generally make them pay when I ask them out.”
They were both laughing, when a loud ringing made them turn. A telegraph boy on a red bicycle was shooting down the mews toward them.
“Quarles?” he began, as he jumped off.
Elinor took the telegram and opened it. The laughter went out of her face as she read. “No answer.” The boy remounted and rode away. Elinor stood staring at the telegram as though its words were written in an unfamiliar language difficult to interpret. She looked at the watch on her wrist, then back at the flimsy paper.
“Will you do something for me?” she said at last, turning to Spandrell.
“But of course.”
“My baby’s ill,” she explained. “They want me to come. If I hurry,” (she looked at her watch), “I can just catch the four-seventeen at Euston. But there’ll be no time for anything else. Will you ring up Everard Webley for me and explain why I can’t dine with him this evening?” It was a warning, she thought; a prohibition. “Before six. At his office.”
“Before six,” he repeated slowly. “At his office. Very well.”
“I must rush,” she said, holding out her hand.
“But I’ll go and get you a cab while you put on your hat.”
She thanked him. Spandrell hurried away along the mews. A prohibition, Elinor repeated to herself, as she adjusted her hat in front of the Venetian mirror in the living room. The choice had been made for her. It was at once a relief and a disappointment. But made, she went on to reflect, at poor little Phil’s expense. She wondered what was the matter with him. Her mother’s telegram—such a characteristic one that she could not help smiling, now that she thought of it again—said nothing: “Philip rather souffrant and though unalarmingly should advise homecoming mother.”
She remembered how nervous and difficult the child had been of late, how easily fatigued. She reproached herself for not having realized that he was working up for an illness. Now it had come. A touch of influenza, perhaps. “I ought to have taken more care,” she kept repeating. She scribbled a note for her husband. “The accompanying telegram explains my sudden departure. Join me at Gattenden tomorrow morning.” Where should she put it so that Philip should be sure to see it when he came in? Leaning against the clock on the mantelpiece? But would he necessarily want to know the time? Or on the table? No; pin it to the screen; that was the thing! He couldn’t miss it. She ran upstairs in search of a pin. On Philip’s dressing table she saw a bunch of keys. She picked them up and looked at them, frowning. “The idiot’s forgotten his latchkey. How will he get in tonight?” The noise of a taxi under the window suggested a solution. She hurried down, pinned the note and the telegram conspicuously to the screen that shut off the drawing-room part of the living room from the door, and let herself out into the mews. Spandrell was standing at the door of the cab.
“That is kind of you,” she said. “But I haven’t finished exploiting you even now.” She held up the keys. “When you see Philip this evening, give him these and tell him with my love that he’s an imbecile. He wouldn’t have been able to get in without them.” Spandrell took the
