The Man Who Wrote Detective Stories by J.I.M. Stewart

Author:J.I.M. Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Man Who Wrote Detective Stories
ISBN: 9780755133567
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

Ballaster was undeniably a shade at a loss as Lady Dumbill entered the room. It was partly her title. He realised that, in the face of that address, it had been a solicism to write “Miss Dumbill” at a venture; he ought to have undertaken a little elementary research in the telephone directory or Who’s Who. But what was more disconcerting than this was the fact that he had certainly met her – or at least seen her – somewhere before. It even sprang into his mind that her reference to a brother in Persia represented the offer of a thread of actual acquaintance which he had failed to pick up. He tried to remember whether his reply to her letter had been worded specifically as to a total stranger. With any luck, it would have been ambiguous on the point. And he must stick to ambiguity for the moment. Perhaps recollection would come to him and he would be able to dissimulate his first failure to command it.

So Charles Ballaster advanced with his small elderly delighted smile – it usually got him off to a flying start – and took his visitor’s hand. “Thank you again, dear Lady Dumbill,” he said, “for your very kind letter. And now thank you for coming to tea. I hope it won’t disappoint you – and that I shan’t too hopelessly do so, either.”

“Oh, no!” Lady Dumbill’s reply was on a note of faint alarm which might have been occasioned either by her host’s empressement or by the general novelty of her situation. “I’m sure you could never do that. It’s something I was sure about the first time we met.” She said this more comfortably. She seemed a comfortable woman: that rather than a distinguished one.

One point was settled; there had been a definite meeting. Ballaster patted Lady Dumbill’s gloved fingers – she couldn’t be forty, so that the fatherly was a distinctly possible note – before bringing her a chair. Of course she was agitated on finding herself in his presence, and he must make it clear that he was the kindest, the least assuming of men. The perfect simplicity that sometimes goes with – well, call it a certain degree of talent, would be what it would be charitable to make this new admirer aware of. “You see,” he said, “writers can scarcely hope to improve on acquaintance. Their vanity, alas, makes them concentrate that sort of ambition entirely on their books.”

Lady Dumbill, from amid what he now noticed as expensive furs, gave a small sigh. It was of satisfaction in a precious expectancy fulfilled. In proceeding thus at once to gnomic utterance her host was making some dream come true. “I can hardly believe it,” she said. “That I’m here, I mean, and talking to you.”

“But that’s only a start.” He looked at her roguishly, as if between them were the absurd joke that he might conceivably venture upon the risqué. “Presently you’re going to be eating my muffins and drinking my china tea.

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