“Be you called Robert Dunn, mister?” he asked.
Dunn gave him a quick and suspicious look, much startled by this sudden recognition in so lonely a spot.
“Yes, I am,” he said, after a moment's hesitation. “Why?”
“If you are, there's this as I'm to give you,” the lad answered, drawing a note from his pocket.
“Oh, who gave you that?” Dunn asked, fully persuaded the note contained some final instructions from Deede Dawson and wondering if this lad were one of his agents in disguise, or merely some inhabitant of the district hired for the one purpose of delivering the letter.
But the lad's drawled reply disconcerted him greatly.
“A lady,” he said. “A real lady in a big car, she told me to wait here and give you this. All alone she was, and drove just like a man.”
He handed the letter over as he spoke, and Dunn saw that it was addressed to him in his name of Robert Dunn in Ella's writing. He blinked at it in very great surprise, for there was nothing he expected less, and he did not understand how she knew so well where he would be or how she had managed to get away from Bittermeads uninterfered with by Deede Dawson.
His first impulse was to suspect some new trap, some new and cunning trap that, perhaps, the unconscious Ella was being used to bait. Taking the letter from the boy, he said:
“How did you know it was for me?”