“What did you do, my dear?” asked madame.
“Do? Well, I felt a perfect fool. I tore the note up and gave the man another.”
“You never told me that, mother,” Sylvia remarked.
“No, dear. I felt too angry about it. So I didn’t tell anyone. It occurred four days before we left Dinard.”
It was upon the tip of Geoffrey’s tongue to relate his own experience at Tours, but he hesitated.
The run next day to Fontainebleau was glorious, and indeed the whole trip across to Boulogne was in most delightful weather, and they all thoroughly enjoyed it. At Boulogne they left the car to be brought to London by the chauffeur, and caught the next boat across to Folkestone and so on to London.
Geoffrey’s leave was up, so he had to be at the Works at Chelmsford on the following day. He seized the opportunity to run over to Witham, and there discovered that during his absence Mr. Mildmay had received two further cipher telegrams, one sent from Fontainebleau, and one from Beauvais, both signed “M. C.”
Now in his many conversations with the handsome widow she had never mentioned that she had any friend in London. On the contrary, on the night they had stopped at Abbeville, while they were dining at the old Tête de Bœuf, she had exclaimed across the table to Mrs. Beverley:
“It really is most sweet of you, dear, to put me up in London. I know nobody there nowadays. I’ve been away so long.”
She made no mention of the man who occupied those expensive chambers in Ryder Street, and as far as Geoffrey knew the pair had never met. Naturally, the young wireless engineer was often at Mrs. Beverley’s house, and his own observations, combined with what Sylvia told him, made it apparent to him that Madame Claudet was a most extravagant woman.