“Hallo! A breakdown! Anything we can do?” asked Arthur, as he stopped and got down.
Sir William was not at all pleased at his mishap, and he answered rather shortly that there was nothing much the matter, and that if the small car were to go on, he would soon overtake it.
The artless-looking Cecil Jones was smoking a cigarette with the same placid smile on his face which had irritated Arthur Aldington at the card-table. He made weak suggestions as to the cause of the mishap, and was treated by the others as a person who did not count.
Gerard, however, who had reason to suspect that he was not quite so simple as he pretended to be, went up to him, and, seizing a moment when the others were all bending down to look into the machinery of the disabled car, said—
“I think I’ve met you before, Mr. Jones, and I’m trying to remember where it was.”
The young man turned, with his sheepish smile on his face.
“Have you?” he said. “I don’t remember you. Where was it we met?”
Gerard felt irritated and angry. He knew that this man was either a swindler who was working with Miss Davison in the dubious paths he suspected, or else that he was a man who was desperately in love with her, and whom she had twisted round her little finger, so that he did what she told him to without question, if not without suspicion.
To judge by his silly face, this latter was the more likely supposition of the two.
Gerard tried to take him by surprise.