I steadied myself against the wall. The effects of the restoratives supplied by my pal at the hotel bar were beginning to work off, and I felt a little weak. Through a sort of mist I seemed to have a vision of Aunt Agatha hearing that the head of the Mannering-Phippses was about to appear on the vaudeville stage. Aunt Agatha’s worship of the family name amounts to an obsession. The Mannering-Phippses were an old-established clan when William the Conqueror was a small boy going round with bare legs and a catapult. For centuries they have called kings by their first names and helped dukes with their weekly rent; and there’s practically nothing a Mannering-Phipps can do that doesn’t blot his escutcheon. So what Aunt Agatha would say⁠—beyond saying that it was all my fault⁠—when she learned the horrid news, it was beyond me to imagine.

“Come back to the hotel, Gussie,” I said. “There’s a sportsman there who mixes things he calls lightning whizzers. Something tells me I need one now. And excuse me for one minute, Gussie. I want to send a cable.”