Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/210

Rh But Reggie, who was watching the Superintendent, said, "What's up your sleeve, Bell?"

The Superintendent laughed. "You do have a way of putting things, Mr. Fortune." He lit a cigarette and looked at his chief. "I don't know what you thought of Mr. Sandford, Mr. Lomas?"

"More do I, Bell," said Lomas. "I only know he's not a man and a brother."

"What I should describe as a lonely cove, sir," Bell suggested. "Chiefly interested in himself, you might say."

"He's a climber," said Lomas.

"Well, well! Who is Sandford—what is he, that all the world don't love him?" Reggie asked. "Who was his papa? What was his school?"

"Well, now, it's rather odd you should ask that, sir," said Superintendent Bell.

"He didn't have a school. He didn't have a father," said Lomas. "First he knows he was living with his widowed mother, an only child, in a little village in North Wales—Llan something. He went to the local grammar-school. He was a kind of prize boy. He got a scholarship at Pembroke, Oxford. Then Mrs. Sandford died, leaving him about a pound a week. He got firsts at Oxford and came into the Home Civil pretty high. He's done well in his Department, and they can't stand him."

"Good brain, no geniality, if you take my meaning," said the Superintendent.