“Yes, please.” He hesitated. “One minute, Jane, I just wanted to say, you don’t mind talking to me like this, do you? I wouldn’t have asked you to if there had been any other way—what I mean to say is....”
Jane gave a very small laugh, which was instantly repressed. She reflected that it was pleasanter to suppress a laugh than a scream.
“What you mean to say is, there aren’t any chaperons in this scene. You needn’t apologise, Henry. Sleuths never have chaperons—it’s simply not done; and, anyhow, I’m sure you’d make a beautiful one. Shall I go on?”
It may be doubted whether Henry really cared about being described as a chaperon. His tone was rather dry as he said:
“Go on, please.”
As for Jane, who had prodded him on purpose just to see if anything would happen, she certainly felt a slight disappointment accompanied by a sense of increased respect.
“You saw Renata. What did she tell you?”
“She told me what she overheard,” said Jane, speaking slowly. “Henry, if I tell you what it was, will you promise me not to let any one guess that you know? If they were certain that I knew, I shouldn’t be alive to-morrow; and if they thought you knew the secret, you’d never get back to London alive.”
“Who is ‘they,’ Jane?” said Henry.
“I want to tell you about Renata first. She really did walk in her sleep, you know. She must have waked when she opened the door. She said the first thing she knew was the cold feel of the hall linoleum under her feet. The door was open, and she was standing just on the threshold. There was a screen in front of her, and beyond the screen a man talking. She heard every word he said, and I am sure that what she repeated to me was just exactly what she heard. The first words that she caught were ‘Formula “A.”’”