Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/143

 Sorrell's mood was growing cynical. Failure, undeserved failure, would be both bitter and absurd.

Yet the Pelican was to have her picture on the illustrated pages of the daily papers, and Sorrell, when he looked back in after days on the ironical splurge of life's coincidences, was moved to a little, mischievous laughter.

It happened in May. A light blue two-seater car drew up tentatively outside the hotel, and a neat, sallow-faced man with a smudge of black hair on his upper lip, got out and approached the porch. Behind him, in the car, he had left one of the most pleasantly pretty creatures Sorrell had ever seen, a soft, short-nosed, merry, insouciant, child-eyed little lady who looked out on life wisely from under the brim of her black "cloche" hat. She had an air of extraordinary unaffectedness, as though she had come straight out of a convent, and found life wonderful, and innocent and good.

The neat and sprightly man with the minute black moustache addressed himself to Sorrell. "Is the manager in?"

"I think so, sir."

Thomas Roland was at the piano, and since the owner of the blue car had asked to see him privately, Sorrell took the stranger to Roland's room. The man's face was vaguely familiar to Sorrell, but he could not remember where he had seen him before. During the war—perhaps? He returned to the lounge so as to be ready to deal with the two light trunks strapped to the luggage grid of the blue car, should he of the little moustache and the quick and restless eyes decide to put up at the Pelican.

Five minutes later Sorrell saw Roland and the stranger mounting the stairs together, and when they reappeared Roland was laughing, and offering his cigarette-case to the visitor.

"That's quite all right. I'll have everything arranged. Stephen, will you take this gentleman's luggage up to No. 1."

The blue car was put away in the garage, and the two