“She was just starting when she wrote.”
I was puzzled. Somebody was clearly lying. Without stopping to reflect that Anne might have excellent reasons for her misleading statements, I gave myself up to the pleasure of scoring off Race. He is always so cocksure. I took the telegram from my pocket and handed it to him.
“Then how do you explain this?” I asked nonchalantly.
He seemed dumbfounded.
“She said she was just starting for Beira,” he said, in a dazed voice.
I know that Race is supposed to be clever. He is, in my opinion, rather a stupid man. It never seemed to occur to him that girls do not always tell the truth.
“Kimberley too. What are they doing there?” he muttered.
“Yes, that surprised me. I should have thought Miss Anne would have been in the thick of it here, gathering copy for the Daily Budget .”
“Kimberley,” he said again. The place seemed to upset him. “There’s nothing to see there—the pits aren’t being worked.”
“You know what women are,” I said vaguely.
He shook his head and went off. I have evidently given him something to think about.
No sooner had he departed than my government official reappeared.
“I hope you will forgive me for troubling you again, Sir Eustace,” he apologized. “But there are one or two questions I should like to ask you.”
“Certainly, my dear fellow,” I said cheerfully. “Ask away.”