"Charming," I assured her, and then we both laughed and said no more till we were at a table in the refreshment-room. There her manner altered; she became more serious and less nervous; her cheeks, too, were slightly pale beneath their open-air tan. She declined food, saying that she would take an early train to Liverpool and breakfast there. And so, over cigarettes and cups of that dark and bitter liquid sold by railway companies as coffee, she told me why she had sent for me. "You've seen the papers, of course," she began. I said I hadn't. The answer seemed to put her off; she replied, almost resentfully: "I never thought you'd have missed them. About Karelsky, I mean." "_That_ man?" I told her frankly that I was sick of hearing and seeing his name, and that I had deliberately avoided the papers because I knew they were all full of it. She nodded slowly and said: "I'm afraid you'll _have_ to read about him, all the same. Unfortunately I didn't bring a paper with me.... It's this speech he made at the Conference yesterday." "What about it?" She stared at the table and said, after a pause: "I don't suppose you'll believe me--especially as you haven't read the papers.... But what happened--roughly--was this. Karelsky announced in his speech a new discovery--about cancer--and everybody clapped and cheered and made a hero of him. Apparently it's a big thing--this discovery." "Well?" She tried hard to be calm. "But the fact is--the fact is--it's not really Karelsky's discovery at all!" "No?" "Not his, I tell you." Even then I wondered what she was driving at. "Then whose is it?" I asked. "It's Terry's." "_Terry's_? ... You mean----" "Just exactly what I say. It's Terry's discovery." It was minutes before I grasped what she meant, and then only hazily. She had to keep on saying: "Terry's--not Karelsky's--don't you see what I mean? Karelsky's stolen it. I've proof--loads of proof. I've been copying out for the last month the very same stuff that Karelsky gave to the Conference yesterday...." She tried to give me details, but they weren't very coherent; she could only assure me that the theft was flagrant and indisputable. "Of course you don't believe me," she said. "I don't blame you. I hardly believed myself when I found it out.... But it's true, all the same." "You mean that what Karelsky's getting all the fame and credit for now is something that Terry found out while he was in Vienna?" "Presumably." "Then, by God, we'll expose the man! We'll fight it out in the courts, and we'll----" "I guessed you would talk like that," she interrupted, half-smiling. "But for the present there's an even more urgent matter to be settled. And that's to do with Terry himself." "He doesn't know yet?" "Probably not. He doesn't read newspapers--perhaps it might be weeks before he'd hear about it at all. But he's bound to know some time, isn't he?" "He _ought_ to know--so that he can fight it out----"