‘Why, of course I know him. I met him in India. As a matter of fact, I did him one or two little services: nothing very grand, but he was impressed by my usefulness.’
‘You mean you introduced him to some white women who were accommodating?’
Gillis lost his smile.
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic,’ he said curtly. ‘I just happened to be useful. I forget what I did. We became friendly and he told me about the collection. Between us we engineered the plan to get hold of Hater.’
‘Oh, I see. Then why did you bring Preston and me into it? I always thought it was odd the Rajah saw me so easily. You had arranged all that before you told me to go and see him?’
‘Of course,’ Gil is said, poured whisky into his glass and sipped it. ‘We decided it would be safer to have a stooge in case things went sour on us. That’s why we picked on Kile. We were just safeguarding ourselves. That’s all.’
‘I see.’ She began to move around the room again. ‘You didn’t bother about what would happen to me if things went sour, as you call it.’
‘Oh, rot! Nothing was likely to happen to you. We knew that. The police wouldn’t be interested in you.’
‘If Preston had told them it was my idea — as he thought it was — they might have been,’ Eve said, going to the window and pushing back the curtain to look down at the rain-soaked street.
‘I knew Kile was too much of a gentleman to implicate you,’ Gil is said easily. ‘I had it all planned pretty neatly. It was just bad luck it flopped. Anyway, that’s all ancient history now. You’ve got your future to think of. The Rajah will make you a settlement.’