“Well, then, the man I took that packing-case to had a voice just like that—high and shrill, whistling almost.”
“I thought as much,” said Dunn. “May I ask you another question?”
She nodded.
“May I smoke?”
She nodded again with a touch of impatience.
He took a cigarette from his pocket and put it in his mouth and lighted a match, but the match, when he had lighted it, he used to put light to a scrap of folded paper with writing on it, like a note.
This piece of paper he used to light his cigarette with and when he had done so he watched the paper burn to an ash, not dropping it to the ground till the little flame stung his fingers.
The ash that had fallen he ground into the path where they stood with the heel of his boot.
“What have you burned there?” she asked, as if she suspected it was something of importance he had destroyed.
In fact it was the note that had fallen from dead John Clive's hand wherein Ella had asked him to meet her at the oak where he had met his death.