"No more than a nodding acquaintance. No better than I knew any of Larry's other patients. I rather liked him, really; but for some reason-maybe it was subconscious memory; don't laugh! — I felt a bit afraid of him without knowing why."
"Yes. Now…" He turned round towards me, and his mouth silently framed the word, "slush": which gave me something of a start until I remembered the cant term for counterfeit money. I got out of my pocket the inevitable £100-note, which had dogged my travels all night, and handed it over to H.M. He shook it in front of her. "Ever see this before, ma'am?"
She was evidently puzzled, and looking for traps. "Not many of them," she said. "It's a hundred-pound note isn't it?"
"It's a counterfeit note."
"Is it? I wouldn't know."
"Still and all, bein' in this neighbourhood," said H.M. persuasively, "you'd have heard all about the capture of Willoughby, the forger, and the discovery of his plant for makin' slush: hey?"
Quite suddenly Elizabeth Antrim began to laugh. It was an honest sound, and it brought honest colour to her face.
"I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry, she told him hastily. Her blue eyes were shining-despite the puffiness of the lids. "But — you will have me up on one charge or another, won't you? So. If it's not one thing it's another. I'm not a counterfeiter. Really, I'm not. Ask Colonel or Mrs. Charters."
The question to be taken up next, of course, was that of the newspaper which Mrs. Antrim said she had found in Hogenauer's scullery, and in which the note had been wrapped up. I think we were all a good deal startled when H.M. said nothing whatever about it. He merely folded up the note and put it into his waistcoat-pocket, where he patted it like a handkerchief. Evelyn glanced up quickly from her cigarette.
"Did you know, by the way," asked H.M., without any change of tone, "that there'd been a burglary here last night?"