“You’ve more imagination than I gave you credit for, Jimmy,” observed Anthony, lighting a cigarette. “I admit that the case presented more difficulties than were at first apparent. What about just sending them to her by post?”
“Like all women, she’d put no date and no address on most of the letters. There was a kind of address on one—just one word. Chimneys.”
Anthony paused in the act of blowing out his match, and he dropped it with a quick jerk of the wrist as it burned his finger.
“Chimneys?” he said. “That’s rather extraordinary.”
“Why, do you know it?”
“It’s one of the stately homes of England, my dear James. A place where Kings and Queens go for weekends, and diplomatists forgather and diplome.”
“That’s one of the reasons why I’m so glad that you’re going to England instead of me. You know all these things,” said Jimmy simply. “A josser like myself from the backwoods of Canada would be making all sorts of bloomers. But some one like you who’s been to Eton and Harrow——”
“Only one of them,” said Anthony modestly.
“Will be able to carry it through. Why didn’t I send them to her, you say? Well, it seemed to me dangerous. From what I could make out, she seemed to have a jealous husband. Suppose he opened the letter by mistake. Where would the poor dame be then? Or she might be dead—the letters looked as though they’d been written some time. As I figured it out, the only thing was for some one to take them to England and put them into her own hands.”
Anthony threw away his cigarette, and coming across to his friend clapped him affectionately on the back.