"Yes, I am," he said, after a moment's hesitation. "Why?"
"If you are, there's this as I'm to give you," the lad answered,
drawing a note from his pocket.
"Oh, who gave you that?" Dunn asked, fully persuaded the note
contained some final instructions from Deede Dawson and wondering
if this lad were one of his agents in disguise, or merely some
inhabitant of the district hired for the one purpose of
delivering the letter.
But the lad's drawled reply disconcerted him greatly.
"A lady," he said. "A real lady in a big car, she told me to wait
here and give you this. All alone she was, and drove just like a
man."
He handed the letter over as he spoke, and Dunn saw that it was
addressed to him in his name of Robert Dunn in Ella's writing.
He blinked at it in very great surprise, for there was nothing he
expected less, and he did not understand how she knew so well
where he would be or how she had managed to get away from
Bittermeads uninterfered with by Deede Dawson.
His first impulse was to suspect some new trap, some new and
cunning trap that, perhaps, the unconscious Ella was being used
to bait. Taking the letter from the boy, he said:
"How did you know it was for me?"
"Lady told me," answered the boy grinning. "She said as I was to
look out for a chap answering to the name of Robert Dunn, with his
face so covered with hair you couldn't see nothing of it no more'n
you can see a sheep's back for wool.
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