"Let
'em GO. Who cares? And I wish him luck. And bring me some Bourbon
as fast as you can, there's a good chap. I'll take that, and then
I'll have another look round Bognor before I turn in."
Stephen was too surprised to say anything but "Bourbon, sir?"
"Go on," said Bechamel. "Damn you!"
Stephen's sympathies changed at once. "Yessir," he murmured,
fumbling for the door handle, and left the room, marvelling.
Bechamel, having in this way satisfied his sense of appearances,
and comported himself as a Pagan should, so soon as the waiter's
footsteps had passed, vented the cream of his feelings in a
stream of blasphemous indecency. Whether his wife or HER
stepmother had sent the detective, SHE had evidently gone off
with him, and that little business was over. And he was here,
stranded and sold, an ass, and as it were, the son of many
generations of asses. And his only ray of hope was that it seemed
more probable, after all, that the girl had escaped through her
stepmother. In which case the business might be hushed up yet,
and the evil hour of explanation with his wife indefinitely
postponed. Then abruptly the image of that lithe figure in grey
knickerbockers went frisking across his mind again, and he
reverted to his blasphemies. He started up in a gusty frenzy with
a vague idea of pursuit, and incontinently sat down again with a
concussion that stirred the bar below to its depths. He banged
the arms of the chair with his fist, and swore again. "Of all the
accursed fools that were ever spawned," he was chanting, "I,
Bechamel--" when with an abrupt tap and prompt opening of the
door, Stephen entered with the Bourbon.
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