“My dear Dicky,” she interrupted, laughing at his expression, “you need not look so displeased with me. Of course, I know that I ought not to have come and sent a message into your club. I will admit at once that it was very forward of me. Perhaps when I have told you why I did so, you won’t look so shocked.”
“I’m glad to see you, anyway,” he declared. “There’s no bad news, I hope?”
“Nothing that concerns us particularly,” she answered. “I simply want to have a little talk with you. Come in here with me, please, at once. We can ride for a short distance anywhere.”
“But I am just in the middle of a rubber of bridge,” he objected.
“It can’t be helped,” she declared. “To tell you the truth, the matter I want to talk to you about is of more importance than any game of cards. Don’t be foolish, Dicky. You have your hat in your hand. Step in here by my side at once.”
He looked a little bewildered, but he obeyed her, as most people did when she was in earnest. She gave the driver an address somewhere in the city. As soon as they were off, she turned towards him.
“Dicky,” she said, “do you read the newspapers?”
“Well, I can’t say that I do regularly,” he answered. “I read the New York Herald, but these London journals are a bit difficult, aren’t they? One has to dig the news out,—sort of treasure-hunt all the time.”
“You have read this murder case, at any rate,” she asked, “about the man who was killed in a special train between Liverpool and London?”
“Of course,” he answered, with a sudden awakening of interest. “What about it?”