Chapter 35

Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of painful indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he knew of a couple of miles farther that led up an unused and practically undrivable track back by the west side to The Open Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to proceed at once down the lane and salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or shouldn't he? For the first mile he decided he would; then, as his anger cooled, he began to think that after all he needn't worry much. The Annas were lucidly too young for serious philandering, and even if that Elliott didn't realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he couldn't do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had made up his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.

There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.

At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used, since his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth when he went into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were cold; and when after difficulty--actual difficulty--he succeeded in seeing the manager, he couldn't but perceive his unusual reserve. He then remembered what he had put down to mere accident at the time, that as he drove up Main Street half an hour before, all the people he knew had been looking the other way.

From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of explanation of the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager going dumb at its mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had arranged the sale of the inn, and again in the street people he knew looked the other way. The solicitor, it appeared, wouldn't be back till the afternoon, and the clerk, an elderly person hitherto subservient, was curiously short about it.

By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined to ask the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he couldn't find anybody. Every one, his architect, his various experts--those genial and frolicsome young men--were either engaged or away on business somewhere else. He set his teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old Ridding--it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his recent undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the bottom of this thing--and walking into the parlour was instantly aware of a hush falling upon it, a holding of the breath.

In the distance he saw old Ridding,--distinctly; and distinctly he saw that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the far end of the great parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of something vast and black heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had the look on his pink and naturally pleasant face of one who has abandoned hope. On seeing Mr. Twist a ray of interest lit him up, and he half rose. The formless mass in the next chair which Mr. Twist