“No, it was you I wanted to see. You’re a detective, aren’t you?”
“I am,” said Michael, wondering what was coming next.
“My car is round the corner: will you come to my house?”
Michael hesitated. He was anxious, more than anxious, to speak to Adele, though he had nothing special to tell her, beyond the thing which he himself did not know and she could never guess.
“With pleasure,” he said.
She was a skilful motorist, and apparently so much engrossed in her driving that she did not speak throughout the journey. In the pretty little drawing-room from which he had a view of the lovely South Downs, he waited expectantly.
“Mr. Brixan, I am going to tell you something which I think you ought to know.”
Her face was pale, her manner curiously nervous.
“I don’t know what you will think of me when I have told you, but I’ve got to risk that. I can’t keep silence any longer.”
A shrill bell sounded in the hall.