Jean looked up. “She must be tremendously curious.”
“I expect so. She’s rather that sort of woman. I haven’t seen them for about three months.”
Mrs. Millicent smiled a little. “She’s a great believer in the power of money and even thought I’d sell my husband’s portrait, to which she took a great fancy. I couldn’t have it with me, as there’s no room for a big picture in our cottage. There are some more things up-stairs, too, that are ours; but I sold everything else in this room.”
Derrick shot a swift inquiring glance at Jean and made a slight gesture toward the mantel. She looked puzzled for a minute, then nodded.
“You didn’t sell this, Mrs. Millicent?” He touched the panel, and the jade god gleamed from its wooden prison.
She put her hand to her breast. “So that is where it was kept! I never knew till Jean told me. No, I didn’t sell it. I never thought of that.”
“It’s hard to say just what it suggests to me now,” he began slowly, “and still more what it may really mean to a man like Blunt. It’s one of those things to which there’s no straight answer. But if there had been no jade god here”—he paused, then added with a brilliant smile—“I wouldn’t have found Jean. Edith doesn’t believe in all this, but—”
“I didn’t say that,” interrupted his sister, “but just that I didn’t understand, and”—she shook her head decisively—“I didn’t want to.”
“Perhaps you were the most right,” he chuckled, “when you suggested that the thing wasn’t somehow healthy.”
“If I did, I stick to it. It’s beastly.”