“Don't I know it!” Philippa groaned. “Mr. Lessingham, you must please try and escape from here. You can have the car, if you like. There must be some place where you can go and hide until you can get away from the country.”
“But I'm dining here to-night,” Lessingham protested. “I'm not going to hide anywhere.”
The two women exchanged glances of despair.
“Can't I make you understand!” Philippa exclaimed pathetically. “You're in danger here—really in danger!”
Lessingham's demeanour showed no appreciation of the situation.
“Of course, I can quite understand,” he said, “that Griffiths is suspicious about me, but, after all, no one can prove that I have broken the law here, and I shall not make things any better by attempting an opera bouffe flight. Can I have my head tied up and come and talk to you about it later on?”
“Oh, if you like,” Philippa assented weakly. “I can't argue.”
She made her way up to her room and changed her wet clothes. When she came down, Lessingham was standing on the hearth rug in the library, with a piece of buttered toast in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. His head was very neatly bound up, and he seemed quite at his ease.
“You know,” he began, as he wheeled a chair up to the fire for her, “that man Griffiths doesn't like me. He never took to me from the first, I could see that. If it comes to that, I don't like Griffiths. He is one of those mean, suspicious sort of characters we could very well do without.”
Philippa, who had rehearsed a little speech several times in her bedroom, tried to be firm.