Pamela smiled upon him in congratulatory fashion.
"On the whole," she said, "I am quite glad that I telephoned to you."
"You showed a sound discretion," he admitted.
"If he had not been lame," she confessed, "I should have sent to Captain Holderness."
"That would have been a great mistake," Lutchester assured her. "Holderness is a good fellow but devoid of imagination. He is great on constituted authority. He would have probably marched up with a squad of heavy-footed policemen--and found nothing."
"Yet I must confess," Pamela persisted, with a frankness unaccountable even to herself, "that if I could have thought of any one else I should never have telephoned to you."
"Because I should not have classified you as being of the adventurous type," she declared.
"After all," he protested, "that is not my fault. That is due to your singular lack of perception. However, I am able to return the compliment. I, for my part, should have thought that you were more interested in the fashions than in paying exceedingly rash visits to degenerate orientals and negroes."
"Perhaps some day," she remarked, "we may understand one another better."
He met her gaze with a certain seriousness.
For some reason they were both silent for a moment. Her tone had changed a little when she spoke again.
"You are sure," she asked, "that you do not mind my leaving the rest of this affair in your hands? There are reasons, which I cannot tell you of just now, which make me anxious not to appear in it at all."
"I accept the charge as a privilege," he assented. "We are within a few yards of my rooms now. I promise you that I will look after Captain Graham and advise him as to the proper course for him to pursue."
"This then," she said, holding out her hand, "will be good-by for the present."
He held her fingers for a moment without reply. Quite suddenly she decided that she liked him. Then he lifted Graham, who was half asleep, half unconscious, to his feet, and assisted him from the car.
"Where shall I tell the man to go to?" he inquired.
"He knows," she answered with sudden taciturnity.
"Wherever it may be, then," he replied, "bon voyage!"
It was about half-an-hour later when Sandy Graham opened his eyes and began to feel the life once more warm in his veins. He was seated in the most comfortable easy-chair of John Lutchester's bachelor sitting-room. By his side was a coffee equipage and a decanter of brandy. His head still throbbed, and his bones ached, but his mind was beginning to grow clearer. Lutchester, who had been seated at the writing table, swung round in his chair at the sound of his guest's movement.