“Good! Quite good!” Anthony approved. “But it won’t do, you know. It won’t do. I repeat, suppose you tell me all about it.”
She essayed escape by another way. She looked up into his face, a light almost tender in her eyes.
“Did you—do you—really mean that about—about serving? Is it true that you want to help me?” she asked. And still her voice was soft; but with how different a softness!
“Most certainly.”
“Then I assure you, Mr. Gethryn, most honestly and sincerely, that you will help me best by—by”—she hovered on the brink of admission—“by not asking me anything, by not trying any more to—to——” She broke down. Her voice died away.
Anthony shook his head. “No. You’re wrong, quite wrong. I’ll show you why. Last night John Hoode was murdered. During the night you swam across the river, crept up to the house, and crouched outside the window of the room in which the murder was done. Why did you do all this? Certainly not for amusement or exercise. Then, unless a coincidence occurred greater than any ever invented by a novelist in difficulties, your visit was in some way connected with the murder. Or, at any rate, some of the circumstances of the murder are known to you.”
“No! No!” Lucia shrank back into her chair.
“There you are, you see.” Anthony made a gesture. “I was putting the point of view of the police and public—what they would say if they knew—not giving my own opinion.
“The sleuth-hounds of fiction,” he went on, “are divinely impartial. The minions of Scotland Yard are instructed to be. But I, madam, am that rarissima avis, a prejudiced detective. Ever since this case began I’ve been prejudiced. I’ve been picking up new prejudices at every corner. And the strongest, healthiest, and most unshakable prejudice of them all is the one in favour of you. Now, suppose you tell me all about it.”
“I—I don’t understand,” she murmured, and looked up at him wide-eyed. “You’re so—so bewildering!”