'But half a second,' I said. 'You must have told her your name. I mean, if you couldn't trace her, she could trace you.'
'Exactly. That's what makes it all seem so infernally hopeless. She knows my name and where I live and everything, but I haven't heard a word from her. I suppose, when I didn't turn up at the hotel, she took it that that was my way of hinting delicately that I had changed my mind and wanted to call the thing off.'
'I suppose so,' I said. There didn't seem anything else to suppose. 'Well, the only thing to do is to whizz around and try to heal the wound, what? How about dinner tonight, winding up at the Abbaye or one of those places?'
Biffy shook his head.
'It wouldn't be any good. I've tried it. Besides, I'm leaving on the four o'clock train. I have a dinner engagement tomorrow with a man who's nibbling at that house of mine in Herefordshire.'
'Oh, are you trying to sell that place? I thought you liked it.'
'I did. But the idea of going on living in that great, lonely barn of a house after what has happened appals me, Bertie. So when Sir Roderick Glossop came along—'
'Sir Roderick Glossop! You don't mean the loony-doctor?'
'The great nerve specialist, yes. Why, do you know him?'
It was a warm day, but I shivered.