“What had Dibbin done?” asked David.
“He hadn’t done anything; but still I gave him a piece of my mind, for I was wild.”
“Poor Dibbin! he is still shaky from it. He has mentioned to me that you went off with a noise like a catherine-wheel. But you never found any papers at all in the flat?”
“No—except one, or rather two, and those Strauss never got.”
“How was that?”
“Because I didn’t find them till the day after we had had the row, when my trunks were ready packed to go, and I wasn’t going to give them to him then, for his cheek. Besides, they didn’t concern him; they were only a marriage certificate, and the certificate of a birth which fell out of a picture.”
David sat up, saying: “How do you mean, ‘fell out of a picture’?”
“As we were carrying out the trunks, there was a bump, and one of the pictures in the corridor came down. The boards at the back of it must have been loose, for they fell out, and among them was an envelope with the two certificates in it.”
“Now, I bless my stars that ever I came to you,” said David. “This may be the very thing I want.”