Still Taylor sat there, regarding his guest through a haze of cigar smoke. "I thought," he said after a moment, "you mentioned that you had talked to them—to the girl, anyway."
"I said I'd told Miss Ellis what Singleton found in Schwarzenberg's box. And God knows that ought to have been enough—"
"Too much," said Taylor, quietly. "Of course they passed it on to Schwarzenberg."
Napier doubted that. "You don't know the Ellises," he said, ignoring the limitations of his own acquaintance. No, his mistake had not been in telling too much. His mistake was that he hadn't told the Ellises enough. He was going to repair the mistake to-night.
"How are you going to do that?" Taylor asked in the same careful tone.
By telling them—telling the girl, anyway—that he'd avoided telling her before—the proved desperate character of this woman's accomplices.
A peculiar fixity came into Taylor's green eyes.
"You can't pass on information we've put in your way here."
"Certainly not," returned Napier with some heat. "What I shall tell has nothing whatever to do with you. I sha'n't hint bureau." Again he consulted his watch. The time dragged.
"You'd mind, I suppose, giving me an idea what you do mean to hint?"