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Updated: May 27, 2025
Twenty-four hours earlier I had been dressing for dinner at Jervaise Hall, and despite my earnest affirmations that in the interval my whole life and character had changed, I was very surely aware that I was precisely the same man I had always been the man who washed, and changed his tie, and brushed his hair in just this same manner every day; who looked at himself in the glass with that same half-frowning, half-anxious expression, as if he were uncertain whether to resent or admire the familiar reflection.
I found my way out by the back door through which Jervaise and I had entered all those incalculable hours ago; and I looked up at the window from which Anne's beautiful voice had hailed me out of the night.
And here was Frank Jervaise, for some mistaken purpose of his own, calmly admitting the possibility of the outrage, instead of scorning the bare idea of it with violence. "I think you're making a ghastly mistake, Frank," he said with a composure that was intended to be extremely ominous. Jervaise clutched at the interruption, probably to give himself a little more time.
I don't mind using the bally thing they owe me that but I'm not going to ask them for it." "Must have been a fair old bust up," he commented, evidently curious still about my quarrel at the Hall. "I told you that it ended with my wanting to fight Frank Jervaise," I reminded him. He grinned again. "How did he get out of it?" he asked. "What makes you think he wanted to get out of it?" I retorted.
I had an idea that she might be going to announce her engagement to Jervaise, an announcement that would critically affect the whole situation; and I had no wish to help her in solving the immediate problem by those means.
How confounded he was, was shown by the change of attitude evident in his next speech. "It's horribly awkward," he said. "Oh! horribly," Anne agreed, with a charming sympathy. "What are you going to do?" "You see, we can't find your brother, either," Jervaise tried tactfully. "I don't quite see what that's got to do with Brenda," Anne remarked with a sweet perplexity.
Anne was pathetically complacent, accepting and discounting his excuses, and professing her willingness to help in any way she possibly could. "But I really and truly expect you'll find Brenda safe at home when you get back," she said, and I felt that she honestly believed that. "I hope so; I hope so," Jervaise responded, and then they most unnecessarily shook hands.
There's nothing more to be said. I've told you precisely how the case stands. Either you come back with us without a fuss, or we shall begin an action at once." I know now that Frank Jervaise was merely bluffing, and that they could have had no case, since Brenda was over eighteen, and was not being detained against her will.
Jervaise, who was taking a lonely promenade up and down the far side of the Hall, looked up more hopefully at this threat. "Oh! we can catch him," Frank commented. "He has stolen the car, for one thing..." his inflection implied that catching Banks might be only the beginning of the trouble. "Well, once we've got him," returned Ronnie hopefully. "Don't be an ass," Frank snubbed him.
"I told him to come round at a quarter to twelve, so that there shouldn't be any mistake. It's very tiresome." She paused on that and Jervaise was inspired to the statement that the fly came from the Royal Oak, didn't it, a fact that Mrs. Sturton had already affirmed more than once.
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