He resumed his examination of the waiting letters with a ruffled mind.  The most urgent thing about them was the clear evidence of gathering anger on the part of his mother.  He had missed a lunch party at Sir Godfrey’s on Tuesday and a dinner engagement at Philip Magnet’s, quite an important dinner in its way, with various promising young Liberals, on Wednesday evening.  And she was furious at “this stupid mystery.  Of course you’re bound to be found out, and of course there will be a scandal.” . . .  He perceived that this last note was written on his own paper.  “Merkle!” he cried sharply.

“Yessir!”

Merkle had been just outside, on call.

“Did my mother write any of these notes here?” he asked.

“Two, sir.  Her ladyship was round here three times, sir.”

“Did she see all these letters?”

“Not the telephone calls, sir.  I ’ad put them on one side.  But. . . .  It’s a little thing, sir.”

He paused and came a step nearer.  “You see, sir,” he explained with the faintest flavour of the confidential softening his mechanical respect, “yesterday, when ’er ladyship was ’ere, sir, some one rang up on the telephone—­”

“But you, Merkle—­”

“Exactly, sir.  But ’er ladyship said ‘I’ll go to that, Merkle,’ and just for a moment I couldn’t exactly think ’ow I could manage it, sir, and there ’er ladyship was, at the telephone.  What passed, sir, I couldn’t ’ear.  I ’eard her say, ‘Any message?’ And I fancy, sir, I ’eard ’er say, ’I’m the ‘ousemaid,’ but that, sir, I think must have been a mistake, sir.”

“Must have been,” said Benham.  “Certainly—­must have been.  And the call you think came from—?”

“There again, sir, I’m quite in the dark.  But of course, sir, it’s usually Mrs. Skelmersdale, sir.  Just about her time in the afternoon.  On an average, sir. . . .”

7

“I went out of London to think about my life.”

It was manifest that Lady Marayne did not believe him.

“Alone?” she asked.

“Of course alone.”

“Stuff!” said Lady Marayne.

She had taken him into her own little sitting-room, she had thrown aside gloves and fan and theatre wrap, curled herself comfortably into the abundantly cushioned corner by the fire, and proceeded to a mixture of cross-examination and tirade that he found it difficult to make head against.  She was vibrating between distressed solicitude and resentful anger.  She was infuriated at his going away and deeply concerned at what could have taken him away.  “I was worried,” he said.  “London is too crowded to think in.  I wanted to get myself alone.”

“And there I was while you were getting yourself alone, as you call it, wearing my poor little brains out to think of some story to tell people.  I had to stuff them up you had a sprained knee at Chexington, and for all I knew any of them might have been seeing you that morning.  Besides what has a boy like you to worry about?  It’s all nonsense, Poff.”