Mrs. Schomberg had had no time to enter into details, Davidson told us.
Indeed, the wonder was that they had been left alone so long. The
drowsy afternoon was slipping by. Footsteps and voices resounded on the
veranda--I beg pardon, the piazza; the scraping of chairs, the ping of
a smitten bell. Customers were turning up. Mrs. Schomberg was begging
Davidson hurriedly, but without looking at him, to say nothing to
anyone, when on a half-uttered word her nervous whisper was cut short.
Through a small inner door Schomberg came in, his hair brushed, his
beard combed neatly, but his eyelids still heavy from his nap. He looked
with suspicion at Davidson, and even glanced at his wife; but he was
baffled by the natural placidity of the one and the acquired habit of
immobility in the other.

"Have you sent out the drinks?" he asked surlily.

She did not open her lips, because just then the head boy appeared with
a loaded tray, on his way out. Schomberg went to the door and greeted
the customers outside, but did not join them. He remained blocking
half the doorway, with his back to the room, and was still there when
Davidson, after sitting still for a while, rose to go. At the noise
he made Schomberg turned his head, watched him lift his hat to Mrs.
Schomberg and receive her wooden bow accompanied by a stupid grin, and
then looked away. He was loftily dignified. Davidson stopped at the
door, deep in his simplicity.

"I am sorry you won't tell me anything about my friend's absence," he
said. "My friend Heyst, you know. I suppose the only course for me now
is to make inquiries down at the port. I shall hear something there, I
don't doubt."