,
too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered.
They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by
a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without
exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly
correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the foliage of the
prim gardens, ruffling them as it might have ruffled the unwilling hair of
the daughters of an arch-deacon. Nobody was abroad. Absurd thoughts ran
through Audrey's head. A letter from Mr. Foulger had followed her to
Birmingham, and in the letter Mr. Foulger had acquainted her with the fact
that Great Mexican Oil shares had just risen to L2 3s. apiece. She knew
that she had 180,000 of them, and now under the thin protection of Mr.
Spatt she tried to reckon 180,000 times L2 3s. She could not do the sum. At
any rate she could not be sure that she did it correctly. However, she was
fairly well convinced beneath the dark, impenetrable sky that the answer
totalled nearly L400,000, that was, ten million francs. And the
ridiculousness of an heiress who owned over ten million francs wandering
about a place like Frinton with a man like Mr. Spatt, searching for another
man like Musa, struck her as exceeding the bounds of the permissible. She
considered that she ought to have been in a magnificent drawing-room of her
own in Park Lane or the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, welcoming counts,
princes, duchesses, diplomats and self-possessed geniuses of finished
manners, with witty phrase that displayed familiarity with all that was
profoundest and most brilliant in European civilisation. Life seemed to be
disappointing her, and assuredly money was not the thing that she had
imagined it to be.

She thought:

"If this walking lamp-post does not say something soon I shall scream."

Mr. Spatt said:

"It seems to be blowing up for rain."

She screamed in the silent solitude of Frinton.

"I'm so sorry," she apologised quickly. "I thought I saw something move."

"One does," faltered Mr. Spatt.

They were now in the shopping street, where in the mornings the elect
encounter each other on expeditions to purchase bridge-markers, chocolate,
bathing costumes and tennis balls. It was a black and empty canyon through
which the wind raced.

"He may be down--down on the shore," Mr. Spatt timidly suggested. He seemed
to be suggesting suicide.

They turned and descended across t