"This is where you can help us. What was it Gerry wanted you to forget?"
Loraine's brows wrinkled a little in perplexity.
"It's so hard to remember exactly now. I opened a letter of Gerry's by mistake. It was written on cheap sort of paper, I remember, and very illiterate handwriting. It had some address in Seven Dials at the head of it. I realized it wasn't for me, so I put it back in the envelope without reading it."
"Sure?" asked Jimmy very gently.
Loraine laughed for the first time.
"I know what you think, and I admit that women are curious. But, you see, this didn't even look interesting. It was a kind of list of names and dates."
"Names and dates," said Jimmy thoughtfully.
"Gerry didn't seem to mind much," continued Loraine. "He laughed. He asked me if I had ever heard of the Mafia, and then said it would be queer if a society like the Mafia started in England—but that that kind of secret society didn't take on much with English people. 'Our criminals,' he said, 'haven't got a picturesque imagination.'"
Jimmy pursed up his lips into a whistle.
"I'm beginning to see," he said. "Seven Dials must be the headquarters of some secret society. As he says in his letter to you, he thought it rather a joke to start with. But evidently it wasn't a joke—he says as much. And there's something else: his anxiety that you should forget what he'd told you. There can be only one reason for that—if that society suspected that you had any knowledge of its activity, you too would be in danger. Gerald realized the peril, and he was terribly anxious—for you."