“No particular reason, except that I ought to have as close a view as possible of everybody mixed up with the case. And I must confess that I’m rather interested to have a look at this doctor-man of yours; he sounds interesting. Can it be done?”
The girl wrinkled her brow. “Ye-es, I should think so. Yes, of course it can! I’m keeping house for the time being, you know. I’ll just take you in with me, and that’s all there’ll be to it.”
“Good! You needn’t say what we are or anything about us. Just introduce us as two friends of yours who are staying down here.”
“Yes, I understand, Miss Williamson will be there, of course, but I don’t know about George; as often as not he has a tray sent into the laboratory for him. Still, you can take the chance.”
“Thanks, we will,” Roger said, descending to the little ledge. “And now, as we’ve got an hour or so to spare, I propose that we devote it to an elevating discussion upon some subject as remote as possible from the business in hand. How say you, my children?”
“Right!” agreed Anthony, who had taken the opportunity of propping himself with his back to the rock as near as possible to Margaret’s side as was consistent with the convention that a young man shall not sit directly on top of a young woman to whom he is not engaged. “Anything you like—except gulls!”
During the next excellent hour Roger, lying on his back in the shade a couple of yards away and staring up into the blue sky, could not possibly have seen a tentative hand emerge from Anthony’s pocket, grope about the turf in an apparently aimless way for at least ten minutes and then pluck up the courage at last to fasten firmly upon another, and very much smaller, hand which had been lying quite still by its owner’s side the whole time. He could not possibly have seen—but he quite definitely knew all about it.
Chapter X.
Tea, China and Young Love
“By the way, I ought to warn you. Miss Williamson isn’t exactly an ordinary secretary: she’s rather an important person. She does any secretarial work George wants, of course, which is very little, but her chief job is to help him in the laboratory. She took a science degree at Cambridge—and I must say,” Margaret added with a little laugh, “she looks it.”
It was nearly half-past four, and the three of them were sitting in Dr. Vane’s drawing-room, waiting for tea and for the other members of the household. Margaret and Anthony showed distinct signs of nervousness, though for what exact reason was not really apparent to either of them; Roger was as collected as ever. The five-odd minutes which had elapsed since they entered the room had been spent happily by him in examining with no little interest the really fine collection of china which filled two large glass-fronted cabinets and overflowed on to two or three shelves and, in the case of a few plates, even the walls themselves. Roger’s knowledge of china was not a large one, but he had a sufficiently good smattering to enable him to talk intelligently on the subject with a collector.