CHAPTER XVI
FINLAY'S S.O.S.
I
"Well, I think it's spies," announced Marjorie Rogers, as she sat perched on the corner of John Dene's table, swinging a pretty foot.
Dorothy looked up quickly. "But——" she began, then paused.
"And it's all Mr. Llewellyn John's fault. He ought to intern all aliens. On raid-nights the Tube is simply disgusting."
Dorothy smiled at the wise air of decision with which Marjorie settled political problems. The strain of the past week with its hopes and fears was beginning to tell upon her. There had been interminable interrogations by men in plain clothes, who with large hands and blunt pencils wrote copious notes in fat note-books. The atmosphere with which they surrounded themselves was so vague, so non-committal, that Dorothy began to feel that she was suspected of having stolen John Dene.
"Oh, mother!" she had cried on the evening of the first day of her ordeal at the hands of Scotland Yard, "you should see your poor, defenceless daughter surrounded by men who do nothing but ask questions and look mysterious. They're so different from Mr. Sage," she had added as an afterthought.
"If it isn't the spies," continued Marjorie, "then what is it?"