He put the speaking tube down again and frowned, slightly tapping the table with his hand.
“May I ask you a few questions, Sir Eustace,” I said, after a minute or two of silence.
“Certainly. What excellent nerves you have, Anne. You are capable of taking an intelligent interest in things when most girls would be sniffling and wringing their hands.”
“Why did you take Harry as your secretary instead of giving him up to the police?”
“I wanted those cursed diamonds. Nadina, the little devil, was playing off your Harry against me. Unless I gave her the price she wanted, she threatened to sell them back to him. That was another mistake I made—I thought she’d have them with her that day. But she was too clever for that. Carton, her husband, was dead too—I’d no clue whatsoever as to where the diamonds were hidden. Then I managed to get a copy of a wireless message sent to Nadina by someone on board the Kilmorden —either Carton or Rayburn, I didn’t know which. It was a duplicate of that piece of paper you picked up. ‘Seventeen one twenty two,’ it ran. I took it to be an appointment with Rayburn, and when he was so desperate to get aboard the Kilmorden I was convinced that I was right. So I pretended to swallow his statements, and let him come. I kept a pretty sharp watch upon him and hoped that I should learn more. Then I found Minks trying to play a lone hand and interfering with me. I soon stopped that. He came to heel all right. It was annoying not getting cabin 17, and it worried me not being able to place you. Were you the innocent young girl you seemed, or were you not? When Rayburn set out to keep the appointment that night, Minks was told off to intercept him. Minks muffed it of course.”
“But why did the wireless message say ‘seventeen’ instead of ‘seventy-one’?”