Bones in London - Edgar Wallace [74]
Bones jumped up from his chair, shrugged his shoulders rapidly, and forced a hideous grin.
“What does it matter to me, dear old Ham?” he asked. “Don’t think I’m worried about a little thing like a typewriter going out to lunch. Pooh! Absurd! Tommy rot! No, my partner, I don’t mind – in fact, I don’t care a–”
“Jot,” said Hamilton, with the gesture of an outraged bishop.
“Of course not,” said Bones wildly. “What does it matter to me? Delighted that young typewriter should have a cousin, and all that sort of thing!”
“Then what the dickens is the matter with you?” asked Hamilton.
“Nothing,” said Bones, and laughed more wildly than ever.
Relationships between Mr Augustus Tibbetts, Managing Director of Schemes Limited, and Miss Marguerite Whitland, his heaven-sent secretary, were strained to the point of breaking that afternoon. She went away that night without saying goodbye, and Bones, in a condition of abject despair, walked home to Devonshire Street, and was within a dozen yards of his flat, when he remembered that he had left his motorcar in the City, and had to take a cab back to fetch it.
“Bones,” said Hamilton the next morning, “do you realize the horrible gloom which has come over this office?”
“Gloom, dear old Ham?” said the dark-eyed Bones. He had spent the night writing letters to Marguerite, and had exhausted all the stationery in sight in the process. “Gloom, old thing! Good gracious, no! Nobody is gloomy here!”
“I can tell you somebody who is,” said Hamilton grimly. “That unfortunate girl you’ve been barking at all the morning–”
“Barking at her?” gasped Bones. “Gracious Heavens, I haven’t betrayed my worried condition of mind, dear old thing? I thought I hid it rather well.”
“What on earth are you worried about?” asked Hamilton, and Bones shrugged.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. A little fever, dear old thing, contracted in the service of King – God bless him! – and country.”
Hamilton’s words had this effect, that he brightened visibly, and for the rest of the morning was almost normal. His spirits took a quick downward turn at five minutes to one, when the debonair Mr Hyane appeared most unexpectedly.
“I’m afraid you’ll think I’m a most awful nuisance, Mr Tibbetts,” he said, “but there are so many things which I must really talk to my cousin about – family affairs, you know.”
“Don’t apologise,” said Bones gruffly.
“I shan’t keep her beyond the hour,” smiled Mr Hyane. “I realize that you are a very busy man.”
Bones said nothing, and when Marguente Whitland appeared, he had gained sufficient control of his emotions to indulge in a feeble jest. The girl’s face was a study at the sight of her cousin. Hamilton, a disinterested observer, read astonishment, annoyance, and resignation in the wide-opened eyes. Bones, who prided himself upon a working knowledge of physiognomy, diagnosed the same symptoms as conveying a deep admiration combined with the reawakening of a youthful love.
“Hello, Jackson!” she said coldly. “I didn’t expect to see you.”
“I told you I would call,” he smiled. “I must see you, Marguerite, and Mr Tibbetts has been so kind that I am sure he will not mind me–”
“Mr Tibbetts is not concerned about the manner in which I spend my lunch hour,” she said stiffly, and Bones groaned inwardly.
There was a silence which Hamilton had not the heart to break after the two had gone, and it was Bones who uttered the first comment.
“That’s that,” he said, and his voice was so quiet and normal that Hamilton stared at him in astonishment.
“Let’s have lunch,” said Bones briskly, and led the way out.
Not even when Miss Whitland came to him that afternoon and asked for permission to take two days’ holiday did his manner change. With a courtesy entirely free from that extravagance to which she had grown accustomed, he acceded to her request, and she was on the point of explaining to him the reason she had so unexpectedly