"I knew you'd come," she greeted me, smiling. But the odd thing was that she was nervous; I could deduce that from the way she talked. "It's so good of you," she went on, "although in the train I was wishing you wouldn't be here, and that I hadn't sent you that wire, and—oh well, you are here, anyway, and it's no use arguing about it."
"The question is rather why you are here."
"Me? Oh, that's easily explained. I've been doing business for my father in Scotland, and to-day I've got to do some more for him in Liverpool. I thought Crewe would be a good meeting-place."
"Charming," I assured her, and then we both laughed and said no more till we were at a table in the refreshment-room. There her manner altered; she became more serious and less nervous; her cheeks, too, were slightly pale beneath their open-air tan. She declined food, saying that she would take an early train to Liverpool and breakfast there. And so, over cigarettes and cups of that dark and bitter liquid sold by railway companies as coffee, she told me why she had sent for me.
"You've seen the papers, of course," she began.
I said I hadn't. The answer seemed to put her off; she replied, almost resentfully: "I never thought you'd have missed them. About Karelsky, I mean."
"That man?" I told her frankly that I was sick of hearing and seeing his name, and that I had deliberately avoided the papers because I knew they were all full of it. She nodded slowly and said: "I'm afraid you'll have to read about him, all the same. Unfortunately I didn't bring a paper with me.... It's this speech he made at the Conference yesterday."
"What about it?"
She stared at the table and said, after a pause: "I don't suppose you'll believe me—especially as you haven't read the papers.... But what happened—roughly—was this. Karelsky announced in his speech a new discovery—about cancer—and everybody clapped and cheered and made a hero of him. Apparently it's a big thing—this discovery."
"Well?"