Merton--"
"Hit me again!" I laughed.
"Oh, but it was very clever of you to pretend to be so learned!" she
hastened to say. "Still, I did know that there are no antiquities below
high water mark, so I knew you just wanted to inspect the place where
something happened to you before."
"Where what happened?" I enquired.
"That's what I want you to tell me! Oh, if you only knew how I've died to
know what happened that night!"
"How do you know anything happened?"
"I guessed," she said.
This may not sound convincing on paper, but it did as she said it. I was
almost ready, in fact, to swear by Jean Rendall now.
"And so you made sure of Thomas Hobhouse!" I said. "But why then didn't
you unmask him at once?"
"Oh, but it wasn't my business to! Of course I had guessed what you were
doing here--"
"What?"
"Trying to rid our island of traitors of course! I had interfered with
you once, but I wasn't going to do it again. In fact I tried to reassure
you by talking of my walk with Mr. Merton."
"Miss Rendall," I said, "I am a child at this game. You did reassure
me. I have been as clay in your hands. But tell me one thing more. Why
on earth did you come out with me on that first walk--armed with that
horse pistol?"
"Oh, you saw it then!" she exclaimed.
"I almost smelt the slow match! But why did you do it?"
"Well, you know what I thought you were then, and there was no one else
to go with you.
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