Two hours later, Frank Farquhar, dark-faced and determined, stood in one of the smaller rooms in Sir Felix Challas’s house in Berkeley Square, while before him, seated easily on the edge of the table, was Jim Jannaway.
“Well, Mr Farquhar,” he said, “what you’ve just stated is to a certain extent correct. I have no reason whatever to hide the truth, now that you have come to me and demanded it. The investigation of Holmboe’s story has simply been a matter of business in which the keenest wits win. We have won.”
“By trickery—and by a burglary, for which Professor Griffin intends to have you arrested.”
Jannaway laughed impudently in his face.
“My dear sir, pray don’t be foolish,” he answered, “why it was Miss Griffin herself who let me in, and who showed me her father’s decipher of the message in Ezekiel. And if you don’t believe me,” he added, “here’s the telegram which she sent me.”
Frank took the telegram he handed him, and read the following words: “Shall place candle at my window at two to-morrow morning. Come. Have something very important to communicate. Love, Gwen.”
Love! The word danced before Frank’s eyes.
“Why should she be acting in your interests, Mr Jannaway, and not in her father’s? That seems to me a very curious point,” he said, for want of something else to say.
“There was a reason—a very strong reason,” replied the fellow, with a mysterious grin, pretending, of course, to be unaware that Farquhar was the girl’s lover; “the little girl is a particular friend of mine.”