"All the way, Miss Rendall. But these devils may be on to my track at any moment, and if they suspect you are in my confidence—"
"What nonsense!" she cried, "if there's any risk I want to share it.
For the credit of our island these people have got to be hunted down, and
I'd like them to know I'm hunting them! Besides, there's rather a nice
cake for tea; you must come in."
And in we went.
XIII
JEAN'S GUESSES
"Come into father's room and then you can smoke," said Jean.
It was the same pleasant, well-remembered room into which she had shown me that day when I first made her acquaintance, and as I followed her in now it struck me forcibly that I had taken the wrong turning that August morning. If I had taken these people into my confidence then, I should at least have started on the right road. Better than ever I realised what tricks my instincts play me. Or perhaps it may be my efforts to regulate them by the light of what I am pleased to call my reason that produce such unhappy results.
"I am wondering how they found you out," she began. "It seems so mysterious that they should have suddenly started to try and murder you like that. They must have felt quite positive—and what made them feel positive?"
"Did you or your father say anything to anybody about my voice; that I didn't seem to have so much accent as I had at first, or anything of that kind?"
"Not a word," she said positively. "Father is the most uncommunicative of people, and I have inherited some of his closeness."