But I made my face expressionless as the front of a shut-up house, with
"to let unfurnished" over the door.
"I expect you've guessed what my idea was, and I bet you know for a fact
whether I was on the right track," he ventured.
"The only thing so far which I know for a fact," I said, "is that you
had no right to talk to the man at all. You should have sent for me at
once."
"You couldn't have come if I had. Dierdre had told me about five minutes
before that you were putting Mrs. Beckett to bed, and giving her a
massage treatment with a rub-down of alcohol."
"Why didn't you ask the man to wait?"
"I did ask him if he _could_ wait, and he said he couldn't. He'd stopped
at Amiens on purpose to deliver his message, and he had to catch a train
on to Allonville, to where it seems his people have migrated."
"You asked him that because you hoped he couldn't wait--and if he could,
you'd have found some reason for not letting me meet him. You thought
you saw a way of getting a new hold over me!"
"Some such dramatic idea may have flitted through my head. I've often
warned you, I _am_ dramatic! I enjoy dramatizing life for myself and
others! But honestly, he couldn't wait for you to finish with Mrs.
Beckett. I know too well how devoted you are to think you'd have left
the old lady before you'd soothed her off to sleep."
"Where is the message?" I snatched Julian back to the point.
"In my brain at present."
"You destroyed the letter?"
"There wasn't a letter.
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