A Mediterranean Mystery

I  HATE the sight of those terra-cotta envelopes that telegrams come in. They have often announced ill news to me, and even in the absence of ill news they bear with them an atmosphere of emergency, suggestions of sudden action, which is always detestable to me.

Bates stood by while I read the ugly puce form which announced, had I known it, the opening of the curious chapter in my otherwise quiet life which I am now trying to recall and to record in its incredible details.

Incredible I mean from my then point of view, for a life and circumstances more remote from adventure than mine were then, it would be hard to imagine.

“There is no reply,” I said to Bates, who stood awaiting instructions. “It’s Mr. Edmund coming for a few nights. Tell Mrs. Rattray he will be here for dinner, and see that a room is ready.”

“Yes, sir. And if he comes without luggage again?”

A little pang of a kind of jealousy shot through me.

It was two years since I or Bates had seen this ne’er-do-weel brother of mine, a year since I had even heard from him, and yet the circumstances of his coming without luggage was fresh in this man’s mind, there was a lightening of his countenance at the mention of his name, and I knew well that my dinner would be one of unwonted luxury.

“He can wear some of my evening things, and give him pyjamas, and—one of your own razors, Bates.”

I will not have other people using my razors or my fountain pen.

Edmund had always been an anxiety and an expense to me. He was now the only incalculable element left in my ordered life. But Bates seemed to be waiting for something, and it was as though a gleam of Edmund’s endearing eyes, the crisp curl above his forehead, the flash of his teeth between merrily curved lips, were faintly reflected from the expectant look in Bates’s face.