"I'm no great reader of newspapers. What about it?"
"Oh, she's started a home for wounded officers near Riversreade Court. There was some big country house near there empty—couldn't really be sold or let. She bought it, renovated it, fitted it up, stuck a staff of nurses and servants in, and got it blessed by the War Office. Jolly nice place, I believe, and she pays the piper."
"Doing the benevolent business, eh?"
"So it appears. Easy game, too, when you've got a couple of millions behind you. Useful, though."
Boxley went away soon after that, and Hetherwick, wondering about what he had learned, and now infinitely inquisitive about the identity of Lady Riversreade with Mrs. Whittingham, went into the smoking-room, and more from habit than because he really wanted to see it, picked up a copy of The Times. Almost the first thing on which his glance lighted was the name that was just then in his thoughts—there it was, in capitals, at the head of an advertisement:
"LADY RIVERSREADE'S HOME FOR WOUNDED OFFICERS, SURREY.—Required at once a Resident Lady-Secretary, fully competent to undertake accounts and correspondence and thoroughly trained in shorthand and typewriting; a knowledge of French and German would be a high recommendation. Application should be made personally any day this week between 10.0 and 12.0 and 3.0 and 5.0 to Lady Riversreade, Riversreade Court, Dorking."
Hetherwick threw the paper aside, left the club, and at the first newsagent's he came to bought another copy. With this in his hand he jumped into a taxi-cab and set off for Surrey Street, wondering if he would find Rhona Hannaford still at Malter's Hotel. He was fortunate in that—she had not yet left—and in a few minutes he was giving her a full and detailed account of his doings since his last interview with her. She listened to his story about Sellithwaite and his discoveries of that morning with a slightly puzzled look.
"Why are you taking all this trouble?" she asked suddenly and abruptly. "You're doing more, going into things more, than the police are. Matherfield was here this morning to tell me, he said, how they were getting on. They aren't getting on at all!—they haven't made one single discovery; they've heard nothing, found out nothing, about the man in the train or the man at Victoria—they're just where they were. But you—you've found out a lot! Why are you so energetic about it?"
"Put it down to professional inquisitiveness, if you like," answered Hetherwick, smiling. "I'm—interested. Tremendously! You see—I, too, was there in the train, like the man they haven't found. Well, now—now that I've got to this point I've arrived at, I want you to take a hand."
"I? In what way?" exclaimed Rhona.