Lettice nodded. Getting up without more ado, she unlocked her desk, strung out the sovereigns in a row upon the white cloth beside him, and returned to her seat.
"Well, I'm hanged!" said Gardiner. "Don't you even want to know what I want it for?"
She shook her head as usual, then added a polite but perfunctory "Yes, of course I'm very much interested."
"I want it because the police are after me."
At that she looked up.
"Yes, the old affair at Grasmere. You weren't in time with that letter to Denis. Mrs. Trent's been at Dent-de-lion for the last six weeks—ever since she left Rochehaut; and she's managed to worm the truth out of Denis. What? Oh yes, the truth; I forgot you didn't know. I did knock Trent down. Of course he was simply asking for it; but the fact remains that technically I'm guilty of manslaughter—murder, Mrs. Trent calls it. Does that give you the horrors?"
"No," said Lettice.
Gardiner's eye lit up. "Ah! it did to Tom. It does to Denis, though he'd rather die than own it. But I had a sort of feeling that you wouldn't take it like that.... You know, it gave me the deuce of a twinge when Tom turned chilly!"
Lettice nodded, accepting that unlikely confidence as a matter of course. She reverted to his former speech.
"Did you say she got it out of Denis?"