Oddly enough, this fellow pleased me no
more than the valet. His smile was ugly, his scowl uglier
still--especially when I made that remark about the hunting field.
"Better have held your tongue, Lal, my boy," said I to myself; and
resolving to hold it for the future, I went to my own diggings and
heard no more of the Colmachers, father or son, for exactly twenty-one
days. The morning of the twenty-second found me at the flat again.
"Benny" Colmacher had returned, and remembered that he had paid me
three weeks' wages.

Now this was the middle of the month of August, and "Benny" certainly
was dressed for country wear. A dot-and-go-one suit of dittoes went
for best, so to speak, with his curly red hair, and got the better of
it by a long way. He had a white rose in his button-hole, and his
manner was as smooth as Vacuum B from a nice clean can. He had just
breakfasted off his usual brandy-and-soda and dry toast when I came in;
and the big cigar did sentry-go across his mouth all the time he talked
to me.

"Come in, come in, Britten," he cried pompously, when I appeared. "You
like your place, I hope--you don't find the work too hard?"

"That's so--sir--a very nice sort of place this for a delicate young
man like myself."

"Ah, but we are going to be a little busier. Has Mr. Walter shown you
the car?"

"No, sir, not yet. I hear she is a White steamer, though."

"Yes, yes; I like steam cars; they don't shake me up. When a man
weighs fifteen stun, he doesn't like to be shaken up, Britten--not good
for his digestion, eh? Well, you go down to the Bedford Mews, No. 23B,
and tell me if you can get the thing going by ten o'clock to-morrow--as
far as Watford, Britten. That's the place, Watford. I've something on
down there--something very important. Upon my soul, I don't know why I
shouldn't tell you. It's about a lady, Britten--ha, ha!--about a lady."

Well, he grinned all over his face just like the laughing gorilla at
the Zoo, and went on grinning for a matter of two minutes or more.
Such a laugh caught you whether you would or no; and while I didn't
care two-pence about his business, and less about the lady, yet here I
was laughing as loudly as he, and seemingly just as pleased.

"Is it a young lady?" I ventured to ask presently. But he stopped
laughing at that, and looked mighty serious.

"You mustn't question me, my lad," he said, a bit proudly. "I like my
servants to be in my confidence, but they