“Whom do you dictate your letters to?” Sarah demanded.

“To tell you the truth,” Jimmy answered, falling on his cocktail, “I haven’t had any to write yet.”

“What has your work been?” Lady Amesbury asked.

“Kind of superintending,” the young man explained, “looking on at everything—­getting the hang of it, you know.”

“Are the other men there nice?” Sarah enquired.

“Well, we don’t seem to have had much time for conversation yet,” Jimmy replied, attacking his caviar like a man anxious to make up for lost time.  “I heard one chap tell another that I’d come to give tone to the establishment, which seemed to me a pleasant and friendly way of looking at it.”

“You didn’t have any commissions yourself?” Sarah went on.

“Well, not exactly,” Jimmy confessed.  “About half an hour before I left, a lunatic with perspiration streaming down his face, and no hat, threw himself into my room.  ‘I’ll buy B. & I.’s,’ he shouted.  ’I’ll buy B. & I.’s!’”

“What did you do?” Wingate enquired with interest.

“I told him I hadn’t got any,” was the injured reply.  “He went cut like a streak of damp lightning.  I heard him kicking up an awful hullaballoo in the next office.”

“Jimmy,” Sarah said reproachfully, “that might have been your first client.  You ought to have made a business of finding him some B. & I.’s.”

“There might have been some in a drawer or somewhere,” Lady Amesbury suggested.

“Distinct lack of enterprise,” Kendrick put in.  “You should have thrown yourself on the telephone and asked me if I’d got a few.”

“Never thought of it,” Jimmy confessed.  “Live and learn.  First day and all that sort of thing, you know.  I tell you what,” he went on, “all the excitement and that gives you an appetite for your food.”

The manager of the restaurant, on his way through the room, recognised Wingate and came to pay his respects.

“Did you hear about the little trouble over in the Court, Mr. Wingate?” he enquired.

“No, I haven’t heard anything,” Wingate replied.

They all leaned a little forward.  The manager included them in his confidence.

“The young gentleman you probably know, Mr. Wingate,” he said,—­“has the suite just underneath yours—­Mr. Stanley Rees, his name is—­disappeared last night.”

“Disappeared?” Lady Amesbury repeated.

“Stanley Rees?” Kendrick exclaimed.

The manager nodded.

“A very pleasant young gentleman,” he continued, “wealthy, too.  He is a nephew of Mr. Peter Phipps, Chairman of the Directors of the British and Imperial Granaries.  It seems he dressed for dinner, came down to the bar to have a cocktail, leaving his coat and hat and scarf up in his room, and telling his valet that he would return for them in ten minutes.  He hasn’t been seen or heard of since.”

“Sounds like the ‘Arabian Nights,’” Jimmy declared.  “Probably found he was a bit late for his grub and went on without his coat and hat.”