“That is rather my impression,” said Palliser. “She has got something up her sleeve, and so has he.”
“He!” Lady Mallowe quite ejaculated the word. “She always has. That's her abominable secretive way. But he! T. Tembarom with something up his sleeve! One can't imagine it.”
“Almost everybody has. I found that out long years ago,” said Palliser, looking at his cigar end again as if consulting it. “Since I arrived at the conclusion, I always take it for granted, and look out for it. I've become rather clever in following such things up, and I have taken an unusual interest in T. Tembarom from the first.”
Lady Mallowe turned her handsome face, much softened by an enwreathing gauze scarf, toward him anxiously.
“Do you think his depression, or whatever it is, means Joan?” she asked.
“If he is depressed by her, you need not be discouraged,” smiled Palliser. “The time to lose hope would be when, despite her ingenuities, he became entirely cheerful. But,” he added after a moment of pause, “I have an idea there is some other little thing.”
“Do you suppose that some young woman he has left behind in New York is demanding her rights?” said Lady Mallowe, with annoyance. “That is exactly the kind of thing Joan would like to hear, and so entirely natural. Some shop-girl or other.”
“Quite natural, as you say; but he would scarcely be running up to London and consulting Scotland Yard about her,” Palliser answered.
“Scotland Yard!” ejaculated his companion. “How in the world did you find that out?”
Captain Palliser did not explain how he had done it. Presumably his knowledge was due to the adroitness of the system of “following such things up.”