you shot a guest on a perfectly innocent errand like mine.'
'By the way, what did you come down for?'
'I was hungry,' said Jimmy. 'I rather fancied a dry biscuit.'
'There are some biscuits in a tin by your bed,' said Rupert Bateman.
He was staring at Jimmy very intently through his horn-rimmed spectacles.
'Ah! That's where the staff work has gone wrong, old boy. There's a tin there with 'Biscuits for Starving Visitors' on it. But when the starving visitor opened it – nothing inside. So I just toddled down to the dining room.'
And with a sweet, ingenuous smile Jimmy produced from his dressing-gown pocket a handful of biscuits.
There was a moment's pause.
'And now I think I'll toddle back to bed,' said Jimmy. 'Night-night, Pongo.'
With an affectation of nonchalance, he mounted the staircase. Rupert Bateman followed him. At the doorway of his room, Jimmy paused as if to say good-night once more.
'It's an extraordinary thing about these biscuits,' said Mr. Bateman. 'Do you mind if I just –?'
'Certainly, laddie, look for yourself.'
Mr. Bateman strode across the room, opened the biscuit box and stared at its emptiness.
'Very remiss,' he murmured. 'Well, goodnight.'
He withdrew. Jimmy sat on the edge of his bed listening for a minute.
'That was a narrow shave,' he murmured to himself. 'Suspicious sort of chap, Pongo. Never seems to sleep. Nasty habit of his prowling around with a revolver.'
He got up and opened one of the drawers of the dressing-table. Beneath an assortment of ties lay a pile of biscuits.
'There's nothing for it,' said Jimmy. 'I shall have to eat all the damned things. Ten to one, Pongo will come prowling round in the morning.'
With a sigh, he settled down to a meal of biscuits for which he had no inclination whatever.
Chapter 28
SUSPICIONS
It was just on the appointed hour of twelve o'clock that Bundle and Loraine entered the park gates, having left the Hispano at an adjacent garage.
Lady Coote greeted the two girls with surprise, but distinct pleasure, and immediately pressed them to stay to lunch.
O'Rourke, who had been reclining in an immense armchair, began at once to talk with great animation to Loraine, who was listening with half an ear to Bundle's highly technical explanation of the mechanical trouble which had affected the Hispano.
'And we said,' ended Bundle, 'how marvellous that the brute should have broken down just here! Last time it happened was on a Sunday at a place called Little Speddlington under the Hill. And it lived up to its name, I can tell you.'
'That would be a grand name on the films,' remarked O'Rourke.
'Birthplace of the simple country maiden,' suggested Socks.
'I wonder now,' said Lady Coote, 'where Mr. Thesiger is?'
'He's in the billiard-room, I think,' said Socks. 'I'll fetch him.'
She went off, but had hardly gone a minute when Rupert Bateman appeared upon the scene, with the harassed and serious air usual to him.
'Yes, Lady Coote? Thesiger said you were asking for me. How do you do, Lady Eileen –'
He broke off to greet the two girls, and Loraine immediately took the field.
'Oh, Mr. Bateman! I've been wanting to see you. Wasn't it you who was telling me what to do for a dog when he is continually getting sore paws?'
The secretary shook his head.
'It must have been someone else, Miss Wade. Though, as a matter of fact, I do happen to know –'
'What a wonderful man you are,' interrupted Loraine. 'You know about everything.'
'One should keep abreast of modern knowledge,' said Mr. Bateman seriously. 'Now about your dog's paws –'
Terence O'Rourke murmured sotto voce to Bundle:
''Tis a man like that that writes all those little paragraphs in the weekly papers. 'It is not generally known that to keep a brass fender uniformly bright, etc.,' 'The dorper beetle is one of the most interesting characters in the insect world,' 'The marriage customs of the Fingalese Indians,' and so on.'
'General Information, in fact.'
'And what more horrible two words could you have?' said Mr. O'Rourke, and added piously. 'Thank the heavens above I'm an educated man and know nothing whatever upon any subject at all.'
'I see you've got clock golf here,' said Bundle to Lady Coote.
'I'll take you on at it, Lady Eileen,' said O'Rourke.
'Let's challenge those two,' said Bundle. 'Loraine, Mr. O'Rourke and I want to take you and Mr. Bateman on at clock golf.'
'Do play, Mr. Bateman,' said Lady Coote, as the secretary showed a momentary hesitation. 'I'm sure Sir Oswald doesn't want you.'
The four went out on the lawn.
'Very cleverly managed, what?' whispered Bundle to Loraine. 'Congratulations on our girlish tact.'
The round ended just before one o'clock, victory going to Bateman and Loraine.
'But I think you'll agree with me, partner,' said Mr. O'Rourke, 'that we played a more sporting game.'
He lagged a little behind with Bundle.
'Old Pongo's a cautious player – he takes no risks. Now, with me it's neck or nothing. And a fine motto through life, don't you agree, Lady Eileen?'
'Hasn't it ever landed you in trouble?' asked Bundle, laughing.
'To be sure it has. Millions of times. But I'm still going strong. Sure, it'll take the hangman's noose to defeat Terence O'Rourke.'
Just then Jimmy Thesiger strolled round the corner of the house.
'Bundle, by all that's wonderful!' he exclaimed.
'You've missed competing in the Autumn Meeting,' said O'Rourke.
'I'd gone for a stroll,' said Jimmy. 'Where did these girls drop from?'
'We came on our flat feet,' said Bundle. 'The Hispano let us down.'
And she narrated the circumstances of the breakdown.
Jimmy listened with sympathetic attention.
'Hard luck,' he vouchsafed. 'If it's going to take some time, I'll run you back in my car after lunch.'
A gong sounded at that moment and they all went in. Bundle observed Jimmy covertly. She thought she had noticed an unusual note of exultance in his voice. She had the feeling that things had gone well.
After lunch they took a polite leave of Lady Coote, and Jimmy volunteered to run them down to the garage in his car. As soon as they had started the same word burst simultaneously from both girls' lips:
'Well?'
Jimmy chose to be provoking.
'Well?'
'Oh, pretty hearty, thanks. Slight indigestion owing to overindulgence in dry biscuits.'
'But what has happened?'
'I tell you. Devotion to the cause made me eat too many dry biscuits. But did our hero flinch? No, he did not.'
'Oh, Jimmy,' said Loraine reproachfully, and he softened.
