She stopped short. She had nearly said “now that I have seen Sir Harold Anstey.”
Mr. Toogood looked at his watch.
“Kitty will be waiting for you now.” He opened the door, and then, to her surprise, said a little hurriedly: “No, not downstairs, but upstairs, Miss Bower! My daughter prefers driving up to the back of the house.”
As he uttered these lying words, he was leading her up the staircase, she bewildered but obedient. When they reached the top story he led her down a passage, and then they walked silently down what had been the back stairs of the old mansion when it was a dwelling-house. Once on the ground floor, he took her rapidly through a small paved court into a kind of little alley, where the car stood waiting.
“Good-bye, Miss Jean! I’ll see if I can catch the Governor to-day, and then your interview will take place, if it can be managed, to-morrow morning.”
It was not often that Mr. Toogood felt a pang of curiosity. As a rule, lawyers know too much, not too little, of their clients’ affairs. But he did wonder very much what it was that Kentworthy had asked Jean Bower to find out. He felt sure that she would fail in her task. Harry Garlett was the last man to be persuaded to say anything he did not wish to say, and if he had indeed been holding clandestine meetings in the wood with some woman whose name he alone knew, he would certainly not “give the lady away.”
Mr. Toogood chuckled a little as he found his way back to his room, remembering that his good friend, Colonel Brackbury, Governor of His Majesty’s Prison at Grendon, had said to him only two days before:
“I feel interested in Jean Bower. I thought her a most attractive girl! We had quite a talk at that cricket match last spring. I should very much like to see her again.”
Late that same afternoon Elsie put her head through the door of the dining room of Bonnie Doon.
“Ye’re wanted on the telephone, Miss Jean.”