One of my very finest antique bedsteads! But I didn't even groan.
"You will let me stay on, won't you, Mr. Smart?" she said, when we were at the fireplace again. "I am really so helpless, you know."
I offered her everything that the castle afforded in the way of loyalty and luxury.
"And we'll have a telephone in the main hall before the end of a week," I concluded beamingly.
Her face clouded. "Oh, I'd much rather have it in my hallway, if you don't mind. You see, I can't very well go downstairs every time I want to use the 'phone, and it will be a nuisance sending for me when I'm wanted."
This was rather high-handed, I thought.
"But if no one knows you're here, it seems to me you're not likely to be called."
"You never can tell," she said mysteriously.
I promised to put the instrument in her hall, and not to have an extension to my rooms for fear of creating suspicion. Also the electric bell system was to be put in just as she wanted it to be. And a lot of other things that do not seem to come to mind at this moment.
I left in a daze at half-past three, to send Britton up with all the late novels and magazines, and a big box of my special cigarettes.