“Oh, yes. After all, that is the real kernel at the moment. You see, she came to me this morning and without any preamble asked me to turn over everything having to do with the case to her for examination.”
“Humph! And did she state why?”
“She volunteered nothing, save that it was her duty and her right to have a complete understanding of the affair. It is possible that she only suspected that I was possessed of what she desired to know, and assumed her air of positiveness to deceive me. When I refused she said that she would see Hong Yo—and, if she must—yourself!”
Kenyon went on smoking quietly; if there was any surprise in this statement for him he did not show it.
“She must be most anxious to obtain facts if she would go the length of asking Kenyon for them.” And Hong Yo laughed, his teeth showing hideously, as he did so.
Farbush echoed the laugh.
“That’s so,” said he. “She would be most anxious, indeed. For somehow, Kenyon, she doesn’t seem to have taken a fancy to you—that is, not the sort of fancy a girl should take to the man whom her friends have selected as her husband.”
“It is not news to me,” replied Kenyon, without a trace of feeling in his voice or manner. “She dislikes me, in fact, and is at no pains to conceal it.”
Hong Yo bent forward across the table, his narrow eyes fixed upon the young adventurer.
“I thought last night that you seemed struck by her appearance,” spoke he.