Brendon produced Jenny’s letter.

“The writer is niece of that man,” he said and handed the communication to Mr. Ganns.

Peter put on his spectacles again and read slowly.  Indeed Mark had never seen a letter read so slowly before.  It might have been in some cryptic tongue which Mr. Ganns could only with difficulty translate.  Having finished he handed the communication back to Brendon and indicated a desire for silence.  Mark lit a cigarette and sat surveying the other from the corner of his eye.

At last the American spoke.

“What about you?  Can you go?”

“Yes; I’ve appealed to my chief and got permission to pick this up again.  My holiday’s due and I’ll go to Italy instead of Scotland.  I was in it from the first, you know.”

“I do know—­I know all about it, from my old pal, Albert Redmayne.  He wrote me the most lucid dispatch that ever I read.”

“You can go, Mr. Ganns?”

“I must go, boy.  Albert wants me.”

“Could you get off in a week?”

“A week!  To-night.”

“To-night, sir!  Do you reckon that Mr. Redmayne is in any danger?”

“Don’t you?’”

“He’s forewarned and you see he’s taking great precautions.”

“Brendon,” said Mr. Ganns, “run round and find when the night boat sails from Dover, or Folkestone.  We’ll reach Paris to-morrow morning, I guess, catch the Rapide for Milan, and be at the Lakes next day.  You’ll find we can do so.  Then telegraph to this dame that we start a week hence.  You take me?”

“You want to get there before we’re expected?”

“Exactly.”

“Then you do think Mr. Albert Redmayne is in danger?”

“I don’t think about it.  I know he is.  But as this mystery has only just let loose on him and he’s got his weather eye lifting, it will be all right, I hope, for a few hours.  Meantime we arrive.”

He took another pinch of snuff and picked up the Times.  “Will you lunch with me here in the grillroom at two o’clock?”

“With pleasure, Mr. Ganns.”

“Right.  And telegraph, right now, that we hope to get off in a week.”

Some hours later they met again and over a steak and green peas Brendon reported that the boat train left Victoria at eleven and that the Rapide would start from Paris on the following morning at half past six.

“We reach Bevano some time after noon next day,” he said, “and can either go on to Milan and then come back to Como and travel by boat to Menaggio, where Mr. Redmayne lives, or else leave the train at Bevano, take steamer on Maggiore, cross to Lugano, and cross again to Como.  That way we land right at Menaggio.  There’s not much in it for time.”

“We’ll go that way, then, and I’ll see the Lakes.”

Peter Ganns spoke little while he partook of a light meal.  He picked a fried sole and drank two glasses of white wine.  Then he ate a dish of green peas and compared their virtues with green corn.  He enjoyed the spectacle of Brendon’s hearty appetite and bewailed his inability to join him in red meat and a pint of Burton.