“Good afternoon, Aguilar,” Audrey greeted him.
“’Noon, madam,” he responded, exactly as though he had been expecting to find the mistress there. “It’s like this. I’ve just seen Inspector Keeble and that there detective as was here afore—you know, madam” (nodding to Audrey) “and I fancy they’re a-coming this way, so I thought I’d better cut back and warn ye. I don’t think they saw me. I was too quick for ’em. Was the bread-and-butter all right, Miss Ingate? Thank ye.”
Miss Ingate had risen.
“I ought to go home,” she said. “I feel sure it would be wiser for me to go home. I never could talk to detectives.”
Jane Foley snatched at one of the four cups and saucers on the table, and put it back, all unwashed, into the china cupboard.
“Three cups will be enough for them to see, if they come,” she said, with a bright, happy smile to Audrey. “Yes, Miss Ingate, you go home. I’m ever so much obliged to you. Now, I’ll go upstairs and Aguilar shall lock me in the tank-room and push the key under the door. We are causing you a lot of trouble, Mrs. Moncreiff, but you won’t mind. It might have been so much worse.” She laughed as she went.
“And suppose I meet those police on the way out, what am I to say to them?” asked Miss Ingate when Jane Foley and Aguilar had departed.
“If they’re very curious, tell them you’ve been here to have tea with me and that Aguilar cut the bread-and-butter,” Audrey replied. “The detective will be interested to see me. He chased me all the way to London not long since. Au revoir, Winnie.”
“Dear friend,” said Madame Piriac, with admirable though false calm. “Would it not be more prudent to fly back at once to the yacht—if in truth this is the same police agent of whom you recounted to me with such drollness the exploits? It is not that I am afraid——”
“Nor I,” said Audrey. “There is no danger except to Jane Foley.”