He had been keeping away from Mrs. Skelmersdale and in the
morning there came a little note from her designed to correct this
abstention. She understood the art of the attractive note. But he
would not decide to go to her. He left the note unanswered.
Then came his mother at the telephone and it became instantly
certain to Benham that he could not play the dutiful son that
evening. He answered her that he could not come to dinner. He had
engaged himself. "Where?"
"With some men."
There was a pause and then his mother's voice came, flattened by
disappointment. "Very well then, little Poff. Perhaps I shall see
you to-morrow."
He replaced the receiver and fretted back into his study, where the
notes on aristocracy lay upon his desk, the notes he had been
pretending to work over all the morning.
"Damned liar!" he said, and then, "Dirty liar!" He decided to lunch
at the club, and in the afternoon he was moved to telephone an
appointment with his siren. And having done that he was bound to
keep it.
About one o'clock in the morning he found himself walking back to
Finacue Street.
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