And when I told him of the bright, cherry-coloured evening gown, and the creamy restaurant coat, and the little cerise satin shoes with jewelled heels that Million had on, he put back his head and laughed gently.
"Poor little girl! Poor little Cousin Nellie! I guess she must have been real mad with herself and you for letting her loose in that get-up," he said, "prancing about all day in the bright sunlight in that outfit. Enough to jar any girl of taste in dress, I guess!"
Then his alert face grew grave again. He said, glancing over his shoulder at the groups that were coming and going in the vestibule: "Well, we'll discuss this. Come into the lounge, where we can talk quietly."
We went into the lounge, where only yesterday I had perceived for the first time the sumptuous apparition of Miss Vi Vassity pouring out tea for my now vanished mistress.
It seemed to me that everybody there looked up at me as we passed in. I bit my lip and frowned a little.
"You are right. This is no place for a quiet chat," said the American softly. "It will have to be my cousin's sitting-room again, I reckon."
Upstairs, in Miss Million's sitting-room, that I seemed to know as well now as a penal-servitude prisoner knows his cell, the American said to me gravely and quietly: "There is one thing, I daresay, which you have not thought of in connection with that——"
He nodded his smooth, mouse-coloured head at the tantalising wire that I still held crushed in my hand.
"Now, I don't know much about your police system," said young Mr. Jessop, "but I reckon it won't be so very different from our own in a matter of this nature." He nodded again, and went on gravely:
"That telegram will have been read all right! The people here, the manager and the Scotland Yard man, they will know what's in that."