He went on as
if he were mad. He was beside himself. He clutched his hair and stamped
about the room, and then he jumped at the telephone and called this
house and got Ponsonby and told him to go straight to the little room
on the top floor and take Amelia's portrait down. I thought that a
little unnecessary myself, but he was in such a whirl of remorse that
it was useless to try and get him to be rational. So Hilda was
consoled, and he calmed down, and we all came down here in the
automobile. So you see----"
At this moment the door opened, and in came Harold.
"I say--hello, Reggie, old man--I say, it's a funny thing, but we can't
find Ponsonby anywhere."
There are moments in a chappie's life, don't you know, when Reason, so
to speak, totters, as it were, on its bally throne. This was one of
them. The situation seemed somehow to have got out of my grip. I
suppose, strictly speaking, I ought, at this juncture, to have cleared
my throat and said in an audible tone, "Harold, old top, _I_ know
where Ponsonby is." But somehow I couldn't. Something seemed to keep
the words back. I just stood there and said nothing.
"Nobody seems to have seen anything of him," said Harold. "I wonder
where he can have got to.
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