Benny made no attempt to evade it.
"Yes," he said, "I do know he's there. The question is, how did you find out, Doctor?"
"Oh, doctors hear everything. To begin with, I recognised Luton Delayne outside the Palace Hotel just as you did. He must have come to us after the affair at Grindelwald. Directly his wife arrived here I thought her face very familiar. I remember meeting them at a dinner party in Onslow Square—it must be three or four years ago. She's a woman you could not forget. We all think that."
Benny did not say that he thought it. A shrewd judge of men, he believed that a spirit of friendship had sent the doctor to the chalet, and he was grateful to him.
"Why, yes," he enjoined. "I guess the whole place would be about unanimous if that lady were in the case. But you haven't answered my question, Doctor; you haven't told me how you knew she was going into Italy. I'm curious, for I knew nothing about it. In fact, I didn't quite expect her to go at all."
The doctor took a cigarette from his case and lighted it carefully. His eyes had a curious trick of looking first to the right of him and then to the left, as though seeking inspiration from the carpet, and he twisted his shadow of a moustache quite fiercely while he pondered a reply.
"Well," he said, "I think that our objects are quite the same. Suppose I say that it was the gendarme here, the man they call Philip Gaillarde; would you be astonished at that?"
"I should be astonished at nothing in Luton Delayne's case. When did you get the news?"
"Oh, in the café this morning. There is a girl there named Susette; the young man is interested, it appears, and she is one of my patients. I have been attending her some days for a little hysteria—nothing serious, but quite alarming to the love-sick swain. Somehow she learned that he is going away, and is in a great state about it. She thinks he is in danger."
"Of what?"