“Oh please!” Florence was horribly confused. She did not feel ready to tell the whole story. “Please. I did not know it was of any consequence. Shows how good a lady cop I am! But I—I got it under very unusual circumstances. I—I’ll tell you. I’ll have to, but not—not just now, please.”
“Oh that’s all right.” Danby’s tone was kindly. “Would you mind letting me have it for a time?”
“Of course not.” Florence held it out to him.
Just then the butler appeared. “James,” said Danby, “give this to Oliver and tell him to deliver it at once to Mr. Mills at his photo shop. If there chances to be a film inside, have him instruct Mills to develop it with extraordinary care, then to make enlargements of all the good exposures.”
“And now,” he said, turning to the ladies, “we may have our tea.”
CHAPTER XXII
THE SILVER SHIP
Early on the following morning two planes left the airport. One was small. It resembled a dragon fly. In it rode Jeanne and Madame Bihari. The other was a great bi-motored cabin plane. It carried as its stewardess our good friend Rosemary Sample. Her passengers were as interesting a group as you might hope to meet.
They were destined, these planes, for the same little city, Happy Vale. Both Jeanne and Rosemary were ignorant of this fact. So it is in life, two congenial souls travel for years along the same path, all unconscious of one another’s nearness.
Rosemary’s interest in her passengers increased as she became better acquainted with them. They were, she discovered, from the University—sociologists, teachers of ethics, psychologists—all delightfully simple, kindly people who laughed and joked about the long strings of letters Ph.D., LL.D. and the like, attached to their names.
She was not long in discovering that a tall thin man with long hair and thick glasses named H. Bedford Biddle had chanced upon what he spoke of as a “rare find” in the field of sociology. They were all, it seemed, going for a look at his “find.”