He paused uncertainly, rubbing his hand over a day's growth of beard.
"But I—we—thought you'd gone to South America," she blurted out, then was sorry she had said it. "That is, we saw it in the Paris paper."
"Not yet; my boat sails in a few days. As a matter of fact"—here he shifted his gaze and glanced about in every direction except at her—"I felt I ought to come back here for the funeral, even though it made a bit of a rush. Old friend of the family and all that."
"Funeral!"
She could not keep her amazement out of her voice.
"But I don't understand. How did you find out…."
She broke off, colouring up to the edge of her nurse's veil. To tell the truth, she could not see how, since Sir Charles only died at four o'clock this morning, Holliday had received the news in time to be here in Cannes now, by car, too, all the way from Paris. It seemed incredible; if he had flown he couldn't have done it.
He shot her a shrewd glance, surmising her reason for being astonished.
"How did I find out Sir Charles was dead? I didn't, at least, not till a little while ago when I arrived in Cannes and rang up the house. But I knew he wasn't expected to live more than a day or two. You see, I've been in communication with—Chalmers more or less during the past few days. I asked him to keep me posted in case the old man got worse or anything. Yesterday he telephoned me that there was absolutely no hope. I hopped into the car and burnt up the road a bit."
He cast an approving glance at his somewhat battered Fiat.