“The oratory!” cried Lib. “Bannerlee, you’ve been false to me. Couldn’t you trust lil’ Lib?”
“So that was it,” muttered Crofts. “You needn’t have been so close about it.”
“Really a downy bird,” giggled Alberta.
I faced the American girl. “This is almost—gratuitous, you know. These unfortunate people are waiting for you to cast some light upon their darkness, not to herald any trifling discovery of mine.”
“Yes, I had better be getting on toward solving the mystery, if we’re ever to be done to-night. The queer thing is that guessing about Mr. Bannerlee’s discovery is what put me on some sort of a track. In fact, if Mr. Bannerlee’s matches hadn’t given out that afternoon he saw the rainbow, I never, never would have seen the path—that sounds like a figure of speech almost, and a paradox, but I mean just that.”
“Matches!”
“Yes, Mr. Bannerlee, by the time you had reached the House you might have been excused for thinking Fate was playing with you. And, by the way, people, a little while ago Mr. Bannerlee explained to me how he had brought his quarto of Sylvan Armitage to Radnorshire with him after all. Naturally, when he left it in the oratory by chance, he did not care to tell us about it, on account of his precious secret. So he had just recovered his copy and was bringing it down the Vale with him that afternoon.”
“Aren’t you going to get out of the sixteenth century?” inquired Ludlow. “It seems to me that you are leading this discussion along the lines of a wranglers’ tea-party.”
“Do forgive me for wasting so much time. The Book of Sylvan Armitage interests me so much; indeed, it helped me tremendously. Mr. Bannerlee caught me reading it the other night; did he tell you?”
“Nothing criminal in that,” said Belvoir.