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“I'm sorry,” I replied, for I was sorry that my tone at the beginning had been sharp.

“I'm not,” she replied. “He does interest me, but the last two days I've felt as though I had influenza coming on and my hunch collapses the moment my temperature rises.”

She didn't sound too low, so with “Well, it's an ill wind … and I hope you'll be all right soon,” and a small joke about Sleuths being linked sometimes with Bromo Quinine for all colds, I hung up.

Chapter VII

The next development—well, it gave Miss Delamere a part she felt made for her. Perhaps it was a week, perhaps even less; we had gone through the mail and settled our answers. I was sitting back getting ready actually to dictate the first. Her cigarette held off at the correct angle by the raised fingers of her left hand, her pencil poised in her right, her legs crossed to balance on her knee her shorthand pad, Miss Delamere was poised in the precise display-angle which she had long studied, at last perfected and strictly preserved. It was as detailedly stylized as the “caress-the-child-and-bless-the-worshiper” carriage of a Byzantine Madonna or the fan-flourish and hip-twist of a Bali dancer. It was the high point of finish, detachment, hard-boiled elegance, I realized. And so, I suppose, I ought to have realized that it was the precise and chosen moment when, with an easy air of just filling in an odd instant before we were well under way, Miss Delamere would be likely to give me a surprise. Nevertheless, I gave her a far more satisfactory reaction than I should when she remarked with deliberately slurred casualness, “Oh, by the way, poor little Miss Brown's dead.”

I was swung back in my desk chair, my hands behind my head—it helps dictation, that stretch. I came forward with something almost of a crash. Of course Miss Delamere's drooped and curled eyelashes kept their slant of semi-bored, almost drowsy indifference. Had I dictated, “Brown, may my body lie by thy cold corse,” she would have flicked down the line with a neat pencil flourish, perhaps asking if I liked “corse” with or without an “e.” As it was, she flicked off a neat little cast of cigarette ash into the small lacquered tray which always stood on my desk's outer corner to serve her need of occasional gesture.

“Dead,” I said with that silly mental echo which the shocked mind will give. It was most highly improbable that Miss Delamere would ever spoil an effect by a false climax. No, Miss Brown was dead, never a doubt of it—the source was unimpeachable, “How?” I said, almost as stupidly as I'd said “dead.”

“She wasn't well last week, y'know. Good deal of flu about. Reckon she'd a rocky heart.”

Well, I shouldn't get any further by simply gasping like a landed fish. I swallowed the words, “Why, only last week.… She did say she was a little off color.… The last thing I said was a joke about taking chills seriously.…”

I knew my shock was meat and drink to Miss Delamere. I was doing the sentimental Britisher—that dear, mellow nineteenth-century spontaneous, gentlemanly stuff, with which Aubrey Smith has made the whole screen world familiar. She was just waiting for me to cough and blow my nose and pull myself together with a fine assembly pull at the old school tie—while she, in the hard-boiled good taste of the New Yorker, might go so far as to allow, with another neat contribution to the ash tray, that it was a queer deal for the old girl. Well, I wouldn't play my part in her little “two-period” piece.

“In reference to your inquiry I can give you an appointment at three-fifteen on Monday the thirtieth. It is important that you should bring with you adequate specimens of the code in question (period). The examples with which you have provided me indicate that the system employed is (comma) pretty certainly (comma) one of that class in which for purposes of decodification it is necessary to detect the repetition of a series of letters or transposed words (period). In these circumstances.…”

I rattled it off at such a pace that, to my delight, I forced Miss Delamere to put down her cigarette. I couldn't hope to drive her to cry for quarter with, “I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that.” But the abandonment of that careless, casual, only-need-half-of-my-attention-and-must-fill-up-the-rest cigarette—that was making one's opponent give ground, if not drop her point. Indeed, I felt that all the ground which I had lost had been regained.

Victory must be confirmed, though, and I worked away all through the lunchtime till every letter was complete. Miss Delamere never even grew tense. If I chose to stick it and so disprove her casting of me in the role of the all too easily touched Englishman who lets business come second because an acquaintance has had to leave business for good, well, then, I had proved my unspoken contention. But I must prove it to the hilt. It must be no mere temporary rally, but a fixed attitude. The hilt, I think, really was reached about four. We were both tired and both with our wary admiration of the other restored—maybe heightened.

“I think,” I said, “you needn't type all those till tomorrow.”

“It won't take me really long,” she said.

“No; do those four important ones about appointments and the two long ones giving readings and references.”

“Would you like flowers sent to Miss Brown's address?”

I knew now that she was the fully co-operative secretary. The hard-enameled glamour girl had had her innings and, if not the human-hearted, at least the more natural-skinned secretary was taking her place.

“I don't think she had any relatives, as far as I know. So I don't see the use.”

There, I knew, I was gaining another point, for we old post-romantics, when we jettisoned crape-and-jet mourning, left obsequies to become part of sub-hygiene; while, to the young hard-boiled, a funeral had, by good business salesmanship, become another essential social function. It was an opportunity for another style of sartorial smartness and a muted wit—another chance of showing oneself able, even with Death, to chat lively across even that super-silent Presence.

“I think, though, you might inquire if there is anything we”—I used the plural—“could do to help in tidying her affairs. She may have left some things unarranged.”

“I'll see,” was answered with an emphasis that made me sure that the inquiries would be properly made and that my secretary-observer was glad to be able to serve in this way.

I was therefore able, when it was collected, to be given information without its seeming food for sentiment. It was simply reporting back on a minor business arrangement: “Yes, Miss Brown had sent for Dr. Innes, who thought she was faced with a pretty sharp attack of flu. There had been some about for a little while, but this was evidently the first—at least to his knowledge—of the second wave which is always considerably more severe and can easily have complications. Sure enough, on the second day they did turn up: high temperature, considerable discomfort, inflammation. Condition was acute in another twenty-four hours. Patient had evidently lived on rather a low diet and pretty certainly had a tired heart. She was one of those unlucky cases sulphanilamide doesn't seem to help, and, for one or two of them (of whom she might have been one), it's now and then actually contra-indicated. She had a really bad day. Then, the fight given up, she went out easily enough.”

Well, that was all there was to it. I'd liked her in an easygoing professional way; should certainly have never known her but for that. It was the suddenness that jarred—like leaning against the back of a firm little chair and suddenly it collapses. My work went on, and, even in real losses, I've heard that work, at least when one's at it, makes one forget. There was plenty to do and at the same time, in all the cases, not one in which I could have needed to ask her opinion. I didn't, of course, forget Miss Brown, It's silly to say that, I think, of almost anyone you've known—at least for years. I just got used to knowing she was dead.

A month must have passed and then I was given a small opportunity of doing something for her memory in quite an unexpected way. I certainly would have declined, had not what I was asked to do seemed to be a slight act of acknowledgment of our acquaintance and her general niceness. One morning, going through my mail, there was a bulgy unopened envelope left on my desk by Miss Delamere—resting like an egg in a nest of neatly opened sheets. Miss Delamere had left it intact because, written on two corners of it in heavily “printed” letters was the “keep out” word “
PERSONAL
.” I put it aside until, with Miss Delamere, the opened letters were all adjudged and decided on. Then, when she had withdrawn to begin the answers, I turned to my personal correspondent. I slid a little steel spatula (I hate poking my finger into an envelope; it's just the way to get hangnails) into the tightly sealed flap and cut it open along the top edge. The spatula flipped out what had made the envelope bulk. It fell on my desk. It was, besides a letter, another envelope that had been folded inside the outer. Before retrieving it I dropped the outer envelope into my wastepaper basket. I then picked up the letter and looked at it.

On it I read, “Dear Mr. Silchester: I must ask your assistance. I am at a loss. After the help you have already given me”… so he acknowledged I had been of use … “on two occasions”… so he was able to appreciate now that I had helped the last time also … “I feel sure you will a third time solve my problem.” Well, he couldn't turn to Miss Brown, poor lady! But what was this! Here she was becoming the mystery herself. “Where has Miss Brown gone? How can I find her? I was hoping just to finish off, with her aid, the detail of some of the clues you two had provided for me”… a none-too-neat way of saying he'd been by-passing me, trying to save “toll”… “I applied for an appointment and was given one. Unfortunately a sudden business call compelled me to cancel that. I wrote, the very next day, apologizing, and asking for another, and enclosing my fee as evidence of bona fides. I received a reply naming a date a week ahead. I waited impatiently, I own. Miss Brown's gift is surely, not in such great demand!” (That vexed me: who was he to judge!) “Then I arrived at her address, only to find the house closed and that she had gone.” Yes, that was indeed a fact, though he evidently had no idea how far. Then my mood, which had been shifting from impatience to vexation, suddenly, like a boom on a yacht, was flung right over into full-blast indignation by the sentence which concluded this increasingly complaining letter: “I'm a poor man. I know I did once keep her waiting for her fee”… no reference to his treatment of me … “But I did pay her and you”… now I was included when it came to his praising himself … “handsomely enough, didn't I? So”… and here was the astounding impudence, “she shouldn't have bilked me. I suppose you know why she has gone off and where, and I will ask you, as the man who introduced me to her, to let me have her new address. I enclose a stamped and addressed envelope, as the matter is urgent.”

Had Miss Brown been a bad woman, I thought, how gladly would I have given you her present address and told you to go there! As it was, wherever she was, she was away from the irritation of this little self-centered fool. I hesitated, about to tear up his impertinent note. Then the chance of giving him a piece of my mind seemed the better choice. I snatched up a pen and wrote rudely on a scrap of scribbling paper, “Mr. Silchester presents his compliments to Mr. Intil and begs to inform him that Miss Brown is buried!”

There, I thought, he won't believe me; he'll have to make inquiries and then he'll find that it's literally true—as true as of John of that ilk. I read it again: there was quite a little punch in the phrasing. Yes, he should have it. It might jar him a bit. And I'd send it to him in his own make-haste-please reply-paid envelope. He'd then see his own writing, think I'd risen all anxious to please and try for another fee, and then inside would be this neat smack in the face like a jack-in-the-box. I folded my note carefully. I reached out my hand and picked up the still folded envelope he had enclosed. Yes, it was correctly stamped, and addressed—this time to a box number, not to a residence. I tucked in my note so that till the last moment he shouldn't see what I'd written, and think he'd gained his point.

I was actually raising it to my lip to moisten the flap when I paused, hearing Miss Delamere's voice raised in rear-action barrage: “No, Mr. Silchester is engaged—is busy. Please wait here.” It
was
a rear action, for her voice was coming closer to my door. She was yielding ground to someone who was evidently not even troubling to reply to her. The door swung open. I saw her to the side. She had failed to act “Bar Lass” and to keep the gate. In the doorway stood another figure—Mr. Mycroft.

My surprise at the intrusion was, need I say, great. It kept me gaping, with the envelope raised to my lip as if I were blowing a kiss or doing something equally idiotic. But the first shock, considerable as it was, was completely obliterated by a second. He didn't say “Good morning,” or “The reason for my intruding”; he simply snapped, “In time!” and strode across to where I sat behind my desk, and pointing at me, almost shouted, “Put that down!” My anger flared up, as fire will out of a whirl of smoke. The intolerable insolence of the old intruder suddenly rushing in from God knows where! I suppose it was a kind of involuntary defiance that made me do it. Under the transparent excuse of going on with what I had been doing before this intrusion—moistening the envelope—I stuck out my tongue as far as I could until it nearly touched the gummed flap. The effect of this gesture led to an action far more outrageous than anything he had done so far. Mr. Mycroft literally swooped and, shooting out his long, skinny left arm, caught my wrist, while with his other hand he snatched the envelope out of my fingers. Surprise made me speechless, until I heard him saying, “Go and wash your hands at once and thoroughly.”