“You’ve been telling me a great deal,” he confided.
She shrugged her answer over her shoulder, and peremptorily motioned him to a chair.
“Madame Durrand has been located,” she began. “The Embassy telephoned me that she is in Passavant Hospital, getting along splendidly; and that she duly wired them of her accident and of my having the letter, with an identifying description of me. The wire was never received.”
“It was blocked by a present,” he remarked. “The wire never left the hospital.”
“So the Marquis d’Hausonville said. He also assured me that the letter was of no immediate importance, and that steps were being taken to have it repeated.”
“Which may be true,” Harleston smiled, “but it is entirely safe to assume that he is acting precisely as though the letter was of the most immediate importance. You may be sure that the moment you left him he dispatched a cable to Paris reciting the facts, so that the Foreign Office could judge whether to cable the letter or to dispatch it by messenger. And he has the reply hours ago.”—(“Also,” he might have added, “our State Department—only it may not be able to translate it.”) “I should say, Mrs. Clephane, that your duty is done now, unless the Marquis calls on you for assistance. You have performed your part—”
“Very poorly,” she interjected.
“On the contrary, you have performed it exceptionally well. You, a novice at this business, prevented the letter from falling into Spencer’s hands, and so you blocked that part of their game. No, no, Mrs. Clephane, I regard you as more than acquitted of blame.”
“You’re always nice, Mr. Harleston!” she responded.
“Nice expresses very inadequately what I wish to be to you,” he said slowly.