"Yes, but I—I haven't yet had time to explain." That poor head, which Lady McIntyre had jerked to Singleton, she jerked now to Napier. "They want me," she told him, "to search Greta's things. What do you think of that?" As Napier didn't at once say what he thought of it, Lady McIntyre flung out, "While she's away!"
Instead of denouncing such a demand, Napier asked, "Where is she?"
"Oh, they've gone off to see some old church, or something, on the coast."
"You don't know where?"
She shook her head. "How can I remember all the places they go to? A fresh one every day."
"Has—a—" Napier caught his tongue back from articulating "Nan." "They've all gone?"
"Yes; and they may be back any moment."
Napier seemed to read in the easy confidence in Mr. Singleton's eyes that he personally did not look for the immediate return of the party. But it occurred to Napier that "the party" meant, to the secret service men, only Greta von Schwarzenberg. It seemed quite possible to Napier's own fears that, by some perverse stroke, Nan Ellis might return alone. She might even at the last moment—Fate did play these tricks—have fallen out of the party. In one of the rooms overhead she might be meditating descent. How else could he account for that all-pervading sense of her presence which filled the house? And he was the only one who knew how much, how infinitely, worse it would be if Nan were to come in and find them—He glanced sharply through the crack of the door.
"I have been explaining,"—Mr. Singleton seemed to invite Mr. Napier's coöperation—"since Lady McIntyre is so sure the view held by the Intelligence Department is mistaken, that it's a kindness to the young lady to embrace this opportunity to clear the matter up."
"Imagine the shabbiness of such conduct!" Lady McIntyre appealed to the figure listening by the door. "I am to take advantage of her absence to rummage among her—"