Chan moved with alacrity despite his weight. "I will give it one powerful push," he promised, and disappeared.
"Well, good luck," said John Quincy, moving on.
Hallet grunted. "You tell that aunt of yours I'm pretty sore," he remarked. He was not in the mood for elegance of diction.
John Quincy's opportunity to deliver the message did not come at lunch, for Miss Minerva remained with Barbara in the city. After dinner that evening he led his aunt out to sit on the bench under the hau tree.
"By the way," he said, "Captain Hallet is very much annoyed with you."
"I'm very much annoyed with Captain Hallet," she replied, "so that makes us even. What's his particular grievance now?"
"He believes you knew all the time the name of the man who dropped that Corsican cigarette."
She was silent for a moment. "Not all the time," she said at length. "What has happened?"
John Quincy sketched briefly the events of the morning at the police station. When he had finished he looked at her inquiringly.
"In the first excitement I didn't remember, or I should have spoken," she explained. "It was several days before the thing came to me. I saw it clearly then—Arthur—Captain Cope—tossing that cigarette aside as we reentered the house. But I said nothing about it."