And the first thing that, bowler-hatted and in her tight habit, Etta Hudson said to Grimshaw in the taxi-cab was:
“Now tell me the truth. Is everything that I’m going to say likely to be used as evidence against me?”
“Oh, come, come!” Robert Grimshaw said.
They were whirled past the tall houses and the flitting rails. They jerked along at a terrific rate down through Kensington until, falling into a stream of motor-propelled vehicles near the Albert Hall, their speed was reduced to a reasonable jog-trot.
“Then you only want to know things,” Etta Stackpole said. “You see, one never can tell in these days what who’s up to. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have fixed it up with Leicester’s wife. She can divorce him and have you.”
“Oh, it’s nothing of that sort,” Grimshaw said.
She looked him up and down with her eyes, curious and scrutinizing.
“I should have thought,” she said, “that she would have preferred you to Dudley. I’m only telling you this that you mayn’t think me mad, suspecting the other thing, but I see you from my window going into Dudley’s house, with your dog behind you. And I should have said that that child preferred you to Dudley, or would jolly well find out her mistake after she’d married him.”
“Oh, it’s nothing of that sort,” Grimshaw reiterated.
“I’ll take your word for it,” she answered. “So I expect it’s only curiosity that brought you here. Why do you always want to know such a jolly lot about people? It must give you a lot of trouble, and you don’t make anything out of it.”