“Thanks! What a pig I am making of myself!” he observed cheerfully. “You girls will think I can't talk about any one but Maderstrom, but the whole business beats me so completely. Of course, we were great pals, in a way, but I never thought that I was the apple of his eye, or anything of that sort. How he got the influence, too, I can't imagine. And oh! I knew there was something else I was going to ask you girls,” Felstead went on. “Have you ever had a letter, or rather a letter each, uncensored? Just a line or two? I think I mentioned Maderstrom which I should not have been allowed to do in the ordinary prison letters.”
Felstead was helping himself to cheese, and he saw nothing of the quick glance which passed between the two women.
“Yes, we had them, Dick,” Philippa told him. “It was one afternoon—it doesn't seem so very long ago. And oh, how thankful we were!”
Felstead nodded.
“He got them across all right, then. Tell me, did they come through Holland? What was the postmark?”
“The postmark,” Philippa repeated, a little doubtfully. “You heard what Dick asked, Helen? The postmark?”
“I don't think there was one,” Helen replied, glancing anxiously at Philippa.
Felstead set down his glass.
“No postmark? You mean no foreign postmark, I suppose? They were posted in England, eh?”
Philippa shook her head.