The Man in the Brown Suit

Twenty-eight
(Extract from the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler)
As I remarked once before, I am essentially a man of peace. I yearn for a quiet life—and
that’s just the one thing I don’t seem able to have. I am always in the middle of storms
and alarms. The relief of getting away from Pagett with his incessant nosing out of
intrigues was enormous, and Miss Pettigrew is certainly a useful creature. Although
there is nothing of the houri about her, one or two of her accomplishments are
invaluable. It is true that I had a touch of liver at Bulawayo and behaved like a bear in
consequence, but I had had a disturbed night in the train. At 3 am an exquisitely dressed
young man looking like a musical-comedy hero of the Wild West entered my compartment
and asked where I was going. Disregarding my first murmur of “Tea—and for God’s
sake don’t put sugar in it,” he repeated his question, laying stress on the fact that he was
not a waiter but an Immigration officer. I finally succeeded in satisfying him that I was
suffering from no infectious disease, that I was visiting Rhodesia from the purest of
motives, and further gratified him with my full Christian names and my place of birth. I
then endeavoured to snatch a little sleep, but some officious ass aroused me at 5:30 with
a cup of liquid sugar which he called tea. I don’t think I threw it at him, but I know that
that was what I wanted to do. He brought me unsugared tea, stone cold, at 6, and I then
fell asleep utterly exhausted, to awaken just outside Bulawayo and be landed with a
beastly wooden giraffe, all legs and neck!
But for these small contretemps, all had been going smoothly. And then fresh calamity
befell.
It was the night of our arrival at the Falls. I was dictating to Miss Pettigrew in my
sitting room, when suddenly Mrs. Blair burst in without a word of excuse and wearing
most compromising attire.
“Where’s Anne?” she cried.
A nice question to ask. As though I were responsible for the girl. What did she expect
Miss Pettigrew to think? That I was in the habit of producing Anne Beddingfeld from my
pocket at midnight or thereabouts? Very compromising for a man in my position.
“I presume,” I said coldly, “that she is in her bed.”
I cleared my throat and glanced at Miss Pettigrew, to show that I was ready to resume
dictating. I hoped Mrs. Blair would take the hint. She did nothing of the kind. Instead she
sank into a chair, and waved a slippered foot in an agitated manner.
“She’s not in her room. I’ve been there. I had a dream—a terrible dream—that she

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was in some awful danger, and I got up and went to her room, just to reassure myself,
you know. She wasn’t there and her bed hadn’t been slept in.”
She looked at me appealingly.
“What shall I do, Sir Eustace?”
Repressing the desire to reply, “Go to bed, and don’t worry over nothing. An able-
bodied young woman like Anne Beddingfeld is perfectly well able to take care of
herself,” I frowned judicially.
“What does Race say about it?”
Why should Race have it all his own way? Let him have some of the disadvantages as
well as the advantages of female society.
“I can’t find him anywhere.”
She was evidently making a night of it. I sighed, and sat down in a chair.
“I don’t quite see the reason for your agitation,” I said patiently.
“My dream—”
“That curry we had for dinner!”
“Oh, Sir Eustace!”