CHAPTER 27Fred Flaxman was talking big in the local. He had been in foreign parts, not just as so many of them had, under the tedium and discipline of army life, but in a kind of glorious splashing freedom.
“When I was valet to the Honourable John de Bent—” he would begin, and before you knew where you were you were in the midst of most thrilling adventures—lovely women, dark secrets, night-clubs more astonishing than could be imagined, murder, mystery, and what have you.
“Cross my heart, chaps, he said good-night to us with no more than fifty yards to go—up one street and round the corner—and no one never saw him again!”
Or it might be, “Nobody hadn’t seen her come in. No noise, no sound of the door—nothing. And there she was, staring at us out of those big eyes and holding her cloak t
