"Know what's in it?" I gasped, staring at him. "Why, how can they? Do you mean," indignantly, "that they opened it?"
"Why, no! You saw for yourself the envelope was not opened when you got the thing. But that is not to say that they could not get it repeated, as easy as winking, at the post-office," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago. "So I'd be ready to bet that everybody here knows what you're up to when you leave this hotel to-morrow. My old acquaintance, Rats, and all of 'em. They'll know you're taking something to your young mistress—your confederate, they'll think her!—in Sussex. You may be quite sure they're not going to allow you to take any trips into Sussex—alone. Nope. Somebody will go with you, Miss Smith."
"Go with me? D'you mean," I said, "that I shall be shadowed all the way by that odious detective man?"
"Well, now, isn't it more than probable, Miss Smith?" said the young American shrewdly. "They'd their eye on you two girls from the start, it seems. You aren't a very usual couple. Noo to me, you are. Both of you seemed noo to them!"
"I knew they gossiped about us!" I said ruefully.
"Sure thing; but don't say 'gossip' as if it was something nobody else did only the folks around this hotel!" protested the American, twinkling. "Well, to-day after the great Jewel Steal you aroused considerable suspicion by refusing to let Rats and the others do the Custom House officer's act through your wardrobe. This wire will have raised more suspicion this evening. And to-morrow—d'you think they're going to let you quit without further notice taken? Think!"
I thought for a second.
I saw that he was perfectly right.
It was just what would happen. Wherever I went to-morrow in search of that baffling mistress of mine I should have that Scotland Yard detective on my heels!
That sort of thing made me terribly nervous and uneasy! But I could imagine the ingenuous Million being forty times worse about it! If I did succeed in running her to earth at last, I could just imagine Million's unconcealed and compromising horror at seeing me turn up with a companion who talked about "the necessary steps" and "the Law!"