I’d followed them out chiefly because ever since I’d read that unfinished note under Rick’s desk pad, and heard that he did finish some kind of a letter to Mr. Fellowes Dunthorne, I’d found myself more and more interested in that gentleman. If Natalie Lane had felt the necessity of calling him up in Port Tobacco, she must have known he was there. If she’d known that, why hadn’t Rick known? Why had he written to him in New York the night before? How well did Natalie know Mr. Dunthorne, and why, if she knew him well enough to phone him, had the two of them spent the afternoon within fifty yards of each other without speaking?
It seemed very strange to me, and it seemed stranger when I wandered into the library to see Mr. Dunthorne there, all elegantly got up in a white dinner coat like the
