The Man in the Brown Suit

Thirty-one
(From the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler)
Johannesburg, March 7th.
Pagett has arrived. He is in a blue funk, of course. Suggested at once that we should go
off to Pretoria. Then, when I had told him kindly but firmly that we were going to remain
here, he went to the other extreme, wished he had his rifle here, and began bucking about
some bridge he guarded during the Great War. A railway bridge at Little Puddecombe
junction, or something of that sort.
I soon cut that short by telling him to unpack the big typewriter. I thought that that
would keep him employed for some time, because the typewriter was sure to have gone
wrong—it always does—and he would have to take it somewhere to be mended. But I had
forgotten Pagett’s powers of being in the right.
“I’ve already unpacked all the cases, Sir Eustace. The typewriter is in perfect
condition.”
“What do you mean—all the cases?”
“The two small cases as well.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so officious, Pagett. Those small cases were no business of
yours. They belong to Mrs. Blair.”
Pagett looked crestfallen. He hates to make a mistake.
“So you can just pack them up again neatly,” I continued. “After that you can go out
and look around you. Jo’burg will probably be a heap of smoking ruins by tomorrow, so
it may be your last chance.”
I thought that that would get rid of him successfully for the morning, at any rate.
“There is something I want to say to you when you have the leisure, Sir Eustace.”
“I haven’t got it now,” I said hastily. “At this minute I have absolutely no leisure
whatsoever.”
Pagett retired.
“By the way,” I called after him, “what was there in those cases of Mrs. Blair’s?”
“Some fur rugs, and a couple of fur—hats, I think.”
“That’s right,” I assented. “She bought them on the train. They 
are
 hats—of a kind—
though I hardly wonder at your not recognizing them. I dare say she’s going to wear one

---

of them at Ascot. What else was there?”
“Some rolls of films, and some baskets—a lot of baskets—”
“There would be,” I assured him. “Mrs. Blair is the kind of woman who never buys
less than a dozen or so of anything.”
“I think that’s all, Sir Eustace, except some miscellaneous odds and ends, a motor veil
and some odd gloves—that sort of thing.”
“If you hadn’t been a born idiot, Pagett, you would have seen from the start that those
couldn’t possibly be my belongings.”
“I thought some of them might belong to Miss Pettigrew.”
“Ah, that reminds me—what do you mean by picking me out such a doubtful character
as a secretary?”
And I told him about the searching cross-examination I had been put through.
Immediately I was sorry, I saw a glint in his eye that I know only too well. I changed the
conversation hurriedly. But it was too late. Pagett was on the warpath.
He next proceeded to bore me with a long pointless story about the 
Kilmorden
. It was
about a roll of films and a wager. The roll of films being thrown through a porthole in
the middle of the night by some steward who ought to have known better. I hate
horseplay. I told Pagett so, and he began to tell me the story all over again. He tells a
story extremely badly, anyway. It was a long time before I could make head or tail of this
one.
I did not see him again until lunchtime. Then he came in brimming over with