Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/175

 takes great pains, ordering it. They seem to enjoy it. Champagne, too—oh, yes: do themselves very well, as they say."

"Did the young lady seem at home?" enquired Wedgwood.

The waiter looked puzzled.

"At home—I don't understand," he said.

"I mean did she seem as if she knew the other two? Did she seem—friendly with them, as if they'd met before?"

"Oh, I don't know that! They pay great attention to her—very polite, you know. Talk and smile to her—much."

"Well—what about after they'd dined?" asked the detective. "Did they leave, then?"

"No—they sit talking over their coffee. The gentleman, he smokes a cigar; he and the other lady have liqueurs with their coffee; the young lady not. They talk a lot with their heads together, eh? Then the gentleman he ask me for telegram forms, and the young lady she writes on two of them and gives them to him, and he puts them in his pocket."

Wedgwood turned to Nottidge who was taking all this in with a frown on his face.

"Does Miss Mortover know your address?" he murmured. "She does—then you may be sure one of those telegrams was for you, and the other for the landlady at Mornington Cres-