"Good morning," he cried. "This is a very pleasant surprise, Mr. Peterson." He waved his visitor to a chair. "Hope you've had no more trouble with your car."
Mr. Peterson drew off his gloves, smiling amiably. "None at all, thank you, Captain Drummond. The chauffeur appears to have mastered the defect."
"It was your eye on him that did it. Wonderful thing—the human optic, as I said to your friend, Mr.—Mr. Laking. I hope that he's quite well and taking nourishment."
"Soft food only," said the other genially. "Mr. Lakington had a most unpleasant accident last night—most unpleasant."
Hugh's face expressed his sympathy. "How very unfortunate!" he murmured. "I trust nothing serious."
"I fear his lower jaw was fractured in two places." Peterson helped himself to a cigarette from the box beside him. "The man who hit him must have been a boxer."
"Mixed up in a brawl, was he?" said Drummond, shaking his head. "I should never have thought, from what little I've seen of Mr. Lakington, that he went in for painting the town red. I'd have put him down as a most abstemious man—but one never can tell, can one? I once knew a fellah who used to get fighting drunk on three whiskies, and to look at him you'd have put him down as a Methodist parson. Wonderful the amount of cheap fun that chap got out of life."
Peterson flicked the ash from his cigarette into the
