Her face clouded.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I don’t want to hear it if it’s a secret. It doesn’t concern me anyway.”
“Oh, but it does—now,” Cheyne protested. “If I don’t tell you now you will think that I am a criminal with something to hide, and I think I couldn’t bear that.”
“No,” she contradicted, “you think that you are in my debt and bound to tell me.”
He laughed.
“Not at all,” he retorted, “since contradiction is the order of the day. If that was it I could easily have put you off with the yarn I told the doctor. I want to tell you because I think you’d be interested, and because it really would be such a relief to discuss the thing with some rational being.”
She looked at him keenly as she demanded: “Honor bright?”
“Honor bright,” he repeated, meeting her eyes.
“Then you may,” she decided. “You may also smoke a pipe if you like.”
“The story opens about six weeks ago with a visit to Plymouth,” he began, and he told her of his adventure in the Edgecombe Hotel, of the message about the burglary, of his ride home and what he found there, and of the despondent detective and his failure to discover the criminals. Then he described what took place on the launch Enid, his search of the coast towns and discovery of the trail of the men, his following them to London and to the Hopefield Avenue house, his adventure therein, the blow on his head, his coming to himself to find the tracing gone, his crawl to the fence and his relief at the sound of her footsteps approaching.