"May I ask what my relapse was?"
"When I got you to the same place as last time and said the same thing, I noticed you jump. And then you did really rather give yourself away when I asked you if you wanted to look at the rocks, and you jumped at the chance. I know nothing about antiquities—not even as much as you do, Mr. Merton—"
"Hit me again!" I laughed.
"Oh, but it was very clever of you to pretend to be so learned!" she hastened to say. "Still, I did know that there are no antiquities below high water mark, so I knew you just wanted to inspect the place where something happened to you before."
"Where what happened?" I enquired.
"That's what I want you to tell me! Oh, if you only knew how I've died to know what happened that night!"
"How do you know anything happened?"
"I guessed," she said.
This may not sound convincing on paper, but it did as she said it. I was almost ready, in fact, to swear by Jean Rendall now.
"And so you made sure of Thomas Hobhouse!" I said. "But why then didn't you unmask him at once?"