The woman held aside one of the curtains and revealed a roomy inner hall, on one side of which rose a galleried staircase.
“Come this way, please,” she said.
Blick followed her up the stair. An open door at the end of the gallery showed him a drawing-room, and in it a grand piano; at the piano sat the blond-moustached man. He was singing, evidently to please himself, and accompanying his fine baritone voice with soft chords. His conductress glanced at Blick and smiled again.
“The Baron—singing Italian love-songs!” she murmured. “He prefers that to shooting, or hunting, or golf! Tastes differ—don’t they?”
“With nationalities,” said Blick. He had already decided that Mrs. Tretheroe’s maid was a bit of a character, worth cultivating, and he smiled back at her. “I guess he’s not English, eh?” he suggested.
“German!” answered the maid knowingly. “All fat!” She laughed, paused before a door, tapped gently, and opening it, motioned Blick to enter. “Mr. Blick, ma’am.”
Mrs. Tretheroe’s voice, somewhat languid in tone, bade Mr. Blick enter, and he walked into what he immediately took to be the boudoir wherein its occupant had held her tête-à-tête with Guy Markenmore after their meeting on the Monday night. Although it was still quite light outside, a rose-tinted lamp was burning in this luxurious nook, and by its subdued gleam Blick saw Mrs. Tretheroe, negligently but becomingly attired, lounging on a sofa; if she was pale, he thought, she was perhaps the more striking. And whether she had a nervous headache or not, she was smoking; the room was heavy with the peculiar scent of fine Turkish tobacco, and on a stand near its mistress’s sofa stood an open box of cigarettes.
“Take a chair,” said Mrs. Tretheroe, glancing approvingly at Blick’s good looks and smart clothes. “This”—she pointed to an easy chair close to herself. “Have a cigarette, won’t you? I’m smoking to soothe my headache.—I got quite upset by all that business this morning. Such an awful lot of talk about nothing, don’t you think?”
Blick out of sheer politeness, took a cigarette, though he hated Turkish tobacco like poison, and dropped into an easy chair.
“Depends,” he answered tersely. “Sometimes you have to do an awful lot of talking over things of this sort—no end of questions, you know, before you can get at one little bit of truth. But I don’t want to bore you with a lot of questions, Mrs. Tretheroe.”