She tried once to draw Karslake about this acquaintance of his, but Karslake’s memory proved unusually sluggish.
“No-o,” he drawled after a tolerably long pause for thought—“can’t say I place the chap you mean, can’t seem somehow to think back that far, you know. One meets such a lot of people, first and last, they talk such a lot of tosh—”
“But it couldn’t have been only tosh you were talking,” the girl persisted, “because—I remember—you were so keen about keeping what you said secret, you spoke the strangest language together most of the time. I could hear every word”—she had already explained about the freak acoustics of the Café des Exiles—“and not one meant anything to me.”
“Stupid of me, but I simply can’t think what it could have been.”
“I can—now.”
Karslake looked askance at Sofia.
“Since I’ve heard so much Chinese spoken by the servants—now I come to think of it”—Sofia’s eyes grew bright with triumph—“I’m sure it must have been Chinese you were speaking to the man I mean.”
“Impossible,” Karslake pronounced calmly.
“But you do know Chinese, don’t you?”
“Not a syllable.”