“We jumped up like two schoolboys released from detention and went along in.  More mystery.  Lunch at Sabre’s place was always a beautifully conducted rite, as I was accustomed to it.  Announced by two gongs, warning and ready, to begin with, and here we’d been shuffled in by a girl’s casual remark in the passage; and beautifully appointed and served when you got there and here was—­Well, there were places laid for two only and a ramshackle kind of cold picnic scattered about the cloth.  Everything there, help yourself kind of show.  Bit of cold meat, half a cold tart, lump of cheese, loaf of bread, assortment of plates, and so on.

“Sabre said, ‘Oh, by the way, my wife’s not here.  She’s away.’

“I murmured the polite thing.  He was staring at the two places, frowning a bit.  ‘Half a minute,’ he said and hopped off on his old stick.  Then I heard him talking to this mysterious girl.  At least I heard her voice first.  ‘Oh, I can’t!  I can’t!’

“Then Sabre:  ’Nonsense, Effie.  You must.  You must.  I insist.  Don’t be silly.’

“Then a door slammed.

“Well, I ask you!  If I didn’t say to myself, ‘The plot thickens,’ if I didn’t say it, I can promise you I thought it.  I did.  And it proceeded to curdle.  The door that had slammed opened and presently in comes Sabre with the girl.  And the girl with the baby in her arms.  Sabre said in his ordinary, easy voice—­he’s got a particularly nice voice, has old Sabre—­’This is a very retiring young person, Hapgood.  Had to be dragged in.  Miss Bright.  Her father’s in the office.  Perhaps you’ve met him, have you?’

“Well, I don’t know what I said, old man.  I know what I thought.  I thought just precisely what you’re thinking.  Yes, I had a furiously vivid shot of a recollection of old Bright as I’d seen him a couple of hours before, of his blazing look, of his gesture of wanting to hurl the Tables of Stone at me, and of his extraordinary remark about Sabre,—­I had that and I did what you’re doing:  I put two and two together and found the obvious answer (same as you) and I jolly near fell down dead, I did.  Jolly near.

“But Sabre was going on, pleasant and natural as you please.  ’Miss Bright was here as companion to my wife while I was in France.  Now she’s staying here a bit.  Put the baby on the sofa, Effie, and let’s get to work.  I’d like you two to be friends.  Hapgood and I were at school together, you know, about a thousand years ago.  They used to call him Porker because he was so thin.’

“The girl smiled faintly, I put up an hysterical sort of squeak, and we sat down.  The meal wasn’t precisely a banquet.  We helped ourselves and stacked up the soiled plates as we used them.  No servants, d’you see?  That was pretty clear by now.  No wife, no servants, no wedding ring; nothing but old Bright’s daughter and old Bright’s daughter’s baby—­and—­and—­Sabre.