“Thank you. You have told us very plainly and very illuminatingly of what happened. I am very grateful for the information.”
“I feel relieved now that I’ve told you this—it may mean more to you than it has done to me. It may even help you to read this riddle. Frankly, I can’t make it out. It would seem to me that Gerald Prescott brought something with him to Considine Manor, something dark and sinister that caused him to be shadowed and spied upon, yet his mother, who should know him best of all, is emphatic that whatever came to him, had its birth and origin here in Considine. Both of us can’t be right.”
She turned to go. Anthony opened the billiard room door for her, then, as she made her exit, came back to me. I looked at him interrogatively.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well, what, Bill?”
“What next? This is rather a facer, isn’t it? A surprising development. You had been here nearly a week, Bill, before I arrived—had you noticed anything of this admiration of Prescott’s for Mary Considine?”
“Can’t say that I had,” I replied after a little reflection—“of course I saw him talking to her sometimes—naturally—but I didn’t regard it as a frightfully serious business. Let me put it like this, I fancied that he found her attractive—come to that who wouldn’t—but I didn’t realize that he was so absolutely bowled over as Mary says.”
Anthony took out his cigarette case, selected a cigarette and tapped it carefully.
“This seat by the tennis courts—do you know exactly where she means?”
“Oh yes. Know it well. Why?”