'MacWhirter? MacWhirter? Who's he? Never heard of him. Has he got an appointment?'
The blonde secretary indicated that such was the case.
'MacWhirter, eh? Oh! MacWhirter! That fellow! Of course! Send him in. Send him in at once.'
Lord Cornelly chuckled gleefully. He was in high good-humour.
Throwing himself back in his chair, he stared up into the dour unsmiling face of the man he had summoned to an interview.
'You're MacWhirter, eh? Angus MacWhirter?'
'That's my name.'
MacWhirter spoke stiffly, standing erect and unsmiling. 'You were with Herbert Clay? That's right, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
Lord Cornelly began to chuckle again.
'I know all about you. Clay got his driving-licence endorsed, all because you wouldn't back him up and swear he was going at twenty miles an hour! Livid about it, he was!' The chuckle increased. 'Told us all about it in the Savoy Grill. That damned pig-headed Scot!' That's what he said! Went on and on. D'you know what I was thinking?'
'I have not the least idea.'
MacWhirter's tone was repressive. Lord Cornelly took no notice. He was enjoying his remembrance of his own reactions.
'I thought to myself: ‘That's the kind of chap I could do with! Man who can't be bribed to tell lies.' You won't have to tell lies for me. I don't do my business that way. I go about the world looking for honest men — and there are damned few of them!'
The little peer cackled with shrill laughter, his shrewd monkey-like face wrinkled with mirth. MacWhirter stood stolidly, not amused.
Lord Cornelly stopped laughing. His face became shrewd, alert. 'If you want a job, MacWhirter, I've got one for you.'
'I could do with a job,' said MacWhirter.
'It's an important job. It's a job that can only be given to a man with good qualifications — you've got those, all right — I've been into that — and to a man who can be trusted — absolutely.'
Lord Cornelly waited. MacWhirter did not speak. 'Well, man, can I depend upon you absolutely?'
MacWhirter said dryly: 'You'll not know that from hearing me answer that of course you can.'
Lord Cornelly laughed.
'You'll do. You're the man I've been looking for. Do you know South America at all?'
He went into details. Half an hour later MacWhirter stood on the pavement, a man who had landed an interesting and extremely well-paid job — and a job that promised a future.
Fate, after having frowned, had chosen to smile upon him. But he was in no mood to smile back. There was no exultation in him, though his sense of humour was grimly tickled when he thought back over the interview. There was a stern poetic justice in the fact that it was his former employer's diatribes against him that had actually got him his present advancement!
He was a fortunate man, he supposed. Not that he cared! He was willing to address himself to the task of living, not with enthusiasm, not even with pleasure, but in a methodical day-after-day spirit. Seven months ago he had attempted to take his own life; chance and nothing but chance had intervened, but he was not particularly grateful. True, he felt no present disposition to do away with himself. That phase was over for good. You could not, he admitted, take your life in cold blood. There had to be some extra fillip of despair, of grief, of desperation or of passion. You could not commit suicide merely because you felt that life was a dreary round of uninteresting happenings.
On the whole he was glad that his work would take him out of England . He was to sail for South America the end of September. The next few weeks he would be busy getting together certain equipment and being put in touch with the somewhat complicated ramifications of the business.
But there would be a week's leisure before he left the country. He wondered what he should do with that week. Stay in London ? Go away?
An idea stirred nebulously in his brain. Saltcreek?
'I've a damned good mind to go down there,' said MacWhirter to himself.
It would be, he thought, grimly amusing.
August 19th.
'And bang goes my holiday,' said Superintendent Battle disgustedly.
Mrs. Battle was disappointed, but long years as the wife of a police officer had prepared her to take disappointments philosophically.
'Oh, well,' she said, 'it can't be helped. And I suppose it is an interesting case?'
'Not so that you'd notice it,' said Superintendent Battle. 'It's got the Foreign Office in a twitter — all those tall thin young men rushing about and saying 'Hush, Hush' here, there and everywhere. It'll straighten out easy though — and we shall save everybody's face. But it's not the kind of case I'd put in my Memoirs, supposing I was ever foolish enough to write any.'
'We could put our holiday off, I suppose — ' began Mrs. Battle doubtfully, but her husband interrupted her decisively.
'Not a bit of it. You and the girls go off to Britlington — the rooms have been booked since March — pity to waste them. I tell you what I'll do — go down and spend a week with Jim when this blows over.'
Jim was Superintendent Battle's nephew. Inspector James Leach.
'Saltington's quite close to Easterhead Bay and Saltcreek,' he went on. 'I can get a bit of sea air and a dip in the briny.'
Mrs. Battle sniffed.
'More likely he'll rope you in to help him over a case!'
'They don't have any cases this time of the year — unless it's a woman who pinches a few six pennyworths from Woolworths. And, anyway, Jim's all right — he doesn't need his wits sharpening for him.'
'Oh, well,' said Mrs. Battle. 'I suppose it will work out all right, but it is disappointing.'
'These things are sent to try us,' Superintendent Battle assured her.
Rose Red and Snow White
I
Thomas Royde found Mary Aldin waiting for him on the platform at Saltington when he got out of the train.
He had only a dim recollection of her, and now that he saw her again he was rather surprisingly aware of pleasure in her brisk, capable way of dealing with things.
She called him by his Christian name.
'How nice to see you, Thomas. After all these years.'
'Nice of you to put me up. Hope it isn't a bother.'
'Not at all. On the contrary. You'll be particularly welcome. Is that your porter? Tell him to bring the things
