“Don’t think I’m a fearful old woman,” he said. “I know we are all rather fed up with these tales of spies and that sort of thing, but do you think it’s wise to even open your lips about a certain matter?”
“What the dickens do you know about it?” Conyers demanded.
“Nothing,” Thomson assured him hastily, “nothing at all. I am only going by what you said yourself. If there is any device on the _Scorpion_ for dealing with these infernal craft, I’d never breathe a word about it, if I were you. I’d put out to sea with a seal upon my lips, even before Geraldine here and Miss Moreton.”
The young man’s cheeks were a little flushed.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted. “I was a little over-excited. To get the _Scorpion_ was more, even, than I had dared to hope for. Still, before the girls it didn’t seem to matter very much. There are no spies, anyhow, hiding in the trees of Berkeley Street,” he added, glancing about them.
Thomson held up his finger and stopped a taxicab.
“You won’t be annoyed with me, will you?” he said to Conyers. “If you’d heard half the stories I had of the things we have given away quite innocently--”
“That’s all right,” the young man interrupted, “only you mustn’t think I’m a gas-bag just because I said a word or two here before Gerry and Olive and you, old fellow.”
“I am so sorry,” he replied, “but I must. I really have rather an important appointment this afternoon.”
“An appointment!” she grumbled. “You are in London for so short a time and you seem to be keeping appointments all the while. I sha’n’t let you go unless you tell me what it’s about.”
“I have to inspect a new pattern of camp bedstead,” he explained calmly. “If I may, I will telephone directly I am free and see if you are at liberty.”
She shrugged her shoulders but gave him a pleasant little nod as he stepped into the taxi.
“Sober old stick, Thomson,” her brother observed, as they started off. “I didn’t like his pulling me up like that but I expect he was right.”
“I don’t see what business it was of his and I think it was rather horrid of him,” Olive declared. “As though Gerry or I mattered!”
“A chap like Thomson hasn’t very much discretion, you see,” Ralph Conyers remarked. “You’ll have to wake him up a bit, Gerry, if you mean to get any fun out of life.”