Davis indulged in a sigh of relief. "We are really coming to it now, then?"
"Yes, you are coming to it. He told me a sudden idea had occurred to him. Here would be a quiet little spot for our meetings, a place where Roddie would never dream of following us. He accosted the caretaker, evidently a drunken and corrupt creature. He explained that he wanted to rent a couple of rooms where he could receive a certain visitor he was expecting in the course of the next week or fortnight. It was no use going to the house agents for that, they would turn down such a proposition. The caretaker, with a couple of five-pound notes in his hand, took an intelligent view of the situation. He gave Hugh a key, and intimated that, if he had sufficient notice, he would make himself scarce on the occasions when the visitor was expected."
"Of all the mad things----" began Davis, but his sister for the second time motioned her brother to silence.
"Not quite so mad as you think. I fancy I can see into his mind. We could have met at a dozen different restaurants in London, but Roddie was here, there and everywhere: at any moment he might have come across us. He would never get as far as Kensington." David nodded his sagacious head. "I think I see. Go on."
"I met him there, in all four times, the last meeting was a few days before the tragedy."
"He paid me the seven thousand pounds in notes. I signed a paper agreeing to give Roddie up. I carried out my bargain. I wrote Roddie that same night, giving him his dismissal, and assuring him that nothing he could urge would induce me to reconsider my determination. He sent me frantic telegrams the next day, but I replied to the same effect. After taking his seven thousand pounds, I could not break faith with Hugh, could I?"
Davis was not quite sure that Iris would not break faith with anybody if it suited her purpose. But clearly Hugh Murchison had subjugated her to the extent of respecting an honourable bargain. No doubt she had fallen in love with him, so far as a person of her shallow temperament could fall in love.
"I don't know, and I don't care. He has bored me to extinction for over nine months. I am glad to be shut of him."
Davis put a question. "You say Hugh Murchison paid you in notes. What have you done with them? His bank will have the numbers."