The Amateur Crime by Anthony Berkeley — Read

It is to be recorded that when Mr. Priestley's tour arrived in London, the member of it known variously as Miss Howard, Mrs. Spettigue, Miss Merrriman and Laura, did not slip away from it. She was hard put to it to explain to herself exactly why she did not, for opportunity after opportunity continued to present itself with sickening plausibility. Perhaps the reason she gave Cynthia later is as good as any: she simply hadn't the heart. Anyhow, the consequence was that, some half-hour afterwards, Laura found herself walking delicately over the threshold of Mr. Priestley's bachelor rooms, still in the rôle of a damsel in distress without a rag to her back or a penny in her purse; though now she had a roof to her head, Mr. Priestley's.

The lender of the roof led her into his study and rang for his man. Twenty seconds later that functionary stood before him, pale, genteel, with a face as like a boiled egg as ever. Nothing had ever been known to disturb this Being, not even when Mr. Priestley, ten years younger and just beginning to open wondering eyes to the sinfulness of this world, had ostentatiously taken to locking up his cigars when not himself requiring the box; so far from being disturbed, all the Being had done was to take, unobtrusively and in a gentlemanly way, an impression of the cigar-cabinet key, walk along to the nearest locksmith's and then proceed as before. If, therefore, anybody could have been so futile as to expect him to show signs of surprise at Mr. Priestley's fracture of a life-long habit in spending an unexpected and unheralded night, and at that an unpacked-for night, away from home, returning the next afternoon with a personable young woman in tow, then that person deserved all the contempt which Barker would scorn to bestow on him. After all, Barker set a certain value on his contempt.