“Yes?” She seemed hardly able to frame the syllable between her dry lips.
Merriman was profoundly unhappy. He felt it was out of the question for him to tell her anything but the exact truth. Whether she would consider he had acted improperly in spying on the syndicate he did not know, but even at the risk of destroying his own chance of happiness he could not deceive her.
“Dear one,” he said in a low tone, “don’t think any worse of me than you can help, and I will tell you everything. You remember that first day that I was here, when you met me in the lane and we walked to the mill?”
She nodded.
“You may recall that a lorry had just arrived, and that I stopped and stared at it? Well, I had noticed that the number plate had been changed.”
“Ah,” she exclaimed, “I was afraid you had.”
“Yes, I saw it, though it conveyed nothing to me. But I was interested, and one night in London, just to make conversation in the club, I mentioned what I had seen. Hilliard was present, and he joined me on the way home and insisted on talking over the affair. As I said, he has a mania for puzzles, and the mystery appealed to him. He was going on that motorboat tour across France, and he suggested that I should join him and that we should call here on our way, so as to see if we could find the solution. Neither of us thought then, you understand, that there was anything wrong; he was merely interested. I didn’t care about the mystery, but I confess I leaped at the idea of coming back in order to meet you again, and on the understanding that there was to be nothing in the nature of spying, I agreed to his proposal.”
Merriman paused, but the girl, whose eyes were fixed intently on his face, made no remark, and he continued:
“While we were here, Hilliard, who is very observant and clever, saw one or two little things which excited his suspicion, and without telling me, he slipped on board the Girondin and overheard a conversation between Mr. Coburn, Captain Beamish, Mr. Bulla, and Henri. He learned at once that something serious and illegal was in progress, but he did not learn what it was.”
“Then there was spying,” she declared accusingly.