He looked at his watch.
“Five o'clock,” he went on. “You'll find the Honorable Tollemache at the Criterion a-drownin' of his sorrers, and if you don't find 'im there, arsk the barmaid at the Lorraine, on Leicester Square. She'll know. Anyway, you get 'im and bring 'im 'ere as quick's you can!”
And the sandy-haired gentleman was off on a run, taking a short cut through Suffolk Lane and disappearing in the blotchy shadows of the Cannon Street Railway Terminus, while Mr. Preserved Higgins telephoned to his devoted adherent, Horatio Pinker of the metropolitan police, recently promoted to desk sergeant, and asked him to see to it that the case against Ali Yusuf Khan be quashed, immediately, and without any undesirable publicity.
He said that he had found the diamond necklace, that he was sorry to have, quite unwittingly, preferred a false charge against the Oriental, and that he would be only too glad to send the latter a good-sized check as balm for his hurt dignity and reputation.
At the other end of the wire, Sergeant Horatio Pinker turned to a colleague.
“Ain't Mr. Higgins the gent, though?” he asked.
Fifteen minutes later, the Cockney millionaire was wagging his russet beard at Tollemache Wade, who was sitting across from him, distracted, nervous, a little the worse for drink.
“I'll do it,” wound up Mr. Higgins, “because of your father, m'boy. Is it a bargain?”
“Oh—I s'pose so.”
