Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/77

 room, owing to the sudden departure of a guest called away to the death-bedside of a relative.

That night he slept the sleep of the physically exhausted.

The morrow and the remainder of the week he devoted to shopping. He found that an hour in the morning, with another hour in the afternoon, after he had been fortified by lunch, was as much as he could stand. His tailor was frankly pleased to see him, and tactfully dissimulated the surprise he felt. In the matter of expedition he achieved the impossible. By the end of the week Beresford found himself completely equipped with all that was necessary to enable him to proceed upon his great search.

On the Monday morning when he drove from the Dickens Hotel to the Ritz-Carlton, he was conscious of two things, a thrill of anticipation and the blatant newness of his luggage.