“The murderer was, of course, the Man in Black,” she said. “I read an account of the case, particularly Mr. Stott’s statement—he is the scared little man who ran away when Yeh Ling and I went to search the house for our papers. Yes, I say ‘our’ advisedly.”
“By-the-way, did Yeh Ling really find what he wanted?”
She nodded.
“And what you wanted?”
She bit her lips.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I think he did and is keeping it from me. He swears that there was nothing of interest to me, but I believe he is being—kindly reticent. Some day I am going to have it out with him.”
The hand that was nearest to him was playing with a twig on the seat, and summoning his courage, he took it in his own and she did not resist.
“Ursula, it isn’t easy—you’d think that a man with my enormous nerve could take the hand of a woman—that he loved—without his heart going like an æroplane propeller, wouldn’t you?”
She did not answer.
“Wouldn’t you?” he repeated desperately. He could think of nothing else to say.