Pendleton sat down and regarded his friend with questioning eyes.
"It wasn't to acquire an appetite that you made up this way. You've been working."
Ashton-Kirk comfortably blew one smoke-ring through another before he answered.
"Will you be surprised to hear that I have been following Miss Edyth Vale on a little voyage to the neighborhood of Cordova?"
"Again!"
"But this time she did not pay a visit to Professor Locke. To-day the favored one was Allan Morris."
"Morris! Then she knows where he is?"
"So it would seem."
"But she told you the other day that she did not."
Ashton-Kirk shrugged his shoulders.