Call Mr. Fortune : A Thriller

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Reggie was standing at the window with his after-breakfast pipe when the Archduchess brought her car back. She was very pale in spite of the morning air, and her face had grown haggard. " Something'll snap," Reggie was saying to himself, when a voice behind him said aloud, "Nice car, sir." He jumped round and saw standing at his elbow that ordinary, sturdy man who was Lomas's companion. "After all, there's nothing like an English car," said this stolid person.
"Oh. You've noticed that?" Reggie said. "You do notice something, then?"
"Of course we aren't gifted, sir. But we're professional. Something in that, don't you think? Yes, sir, as you say: we have noticed something. It was a foreign car, and foreign tyres did the trick last night. And the Archduchess drives English. And yet-did you know we had the other half of the hatpin? I picked it up last night." He held out a scrap of steel with a big head of wrought silver. "German work, they tell me."
"Viennese," Reggie said.
"You know everything, sir. Such a convenience. But Vienna being quite near Bohemia, as I've heard- looks awkward, don't it?"
"Is that what you came to say?"
"Not wholly, sir. No. I am Superintendent Bell. Mr. Lomas sent me to you. He considered you might find it convenient to have some one in the house who could keep an eye open."
"Very kind of Mr. Lomas."