He found difficulty in suppressing a grim smile. Everything was all right now, was it, and he could run away home? He did not agree with Mrs. Jones.
“Yes,” she replied. “It was very kind of you to come, but—”
“Wait!” cried Ross, for she had turned away toward the sofa.
Without so much as turning her head, she went on a few steps, took the knitted scarf from her shoulders, and threw it over the end of the sofa. And he saw then that just the tip of the man’s fingers had been visible, and that the trailing end of the scarf covered them now. She knew!
“Well?” she asked, looking inquiringly at him through her spectacles. No; it was impossible; the whole thing was utterly impossible!
This sedate, respectable, gray-haired woman, this housekeeper who looked as if she would not overlook the smallest trace of dust in a corner, certainly, surely would not leave a dead man under her sofa.
She was stroking the cat, and the animal had assumed an expression of idiotic delight, pink tongue protruding a little, eyes half open. Would even a cat be so monstrously indifferent if—if what he thought he had seen under the sofa were really there?
“Would you like me to telephone for a taxi to take you to the station?” asked Mrs. Jones, very civilly.
“Ha!” thought Ross. “You want to get rid of me, don’t you?”
And that aroused all his stiff-necked obstinacy. He would not go away now, after all his trouble, without any sort of explanation of the situation.