way announced,
“The gentlemen from the Press to see you, sir!”
Dart Huron looked up in surprise. Aria, stunned as she was by the blow from Lulu’s hand and angry with a kind of almost smouldering fury which seemed to be seeping like a crimson tide through her blood, could not help but notice the strangeness of the expression on Lulu’s face.
Six men were ushered into the room. Three of them carried cameras, the others were quite obviously reporters. They came forward until they reached the group of three people standing in front of the fireplace and then the eldest amongst them appeared to take the initiative.
“Good morning, Mr. Huron!”
“I am surprised to see you, gentlemen,” Dart Huron replied. “You certainly wasted no time in getting here, although I cannot quite understand how the information could have reached you even before the arrival of the doctor.”
“The doctor!”
The press men looked puzzled and two of them looked at each other obviously in bewilderment. One of the photographers was smiling at Lulu Carlo, his fingers already busy with his camera, whilst, almost instinctively it seemed to Aria, Lulu was standing in an extremely photogenic position.
The press man’s question, however, seemed to check Dart Huron in what he was about to say.
“One moment,” he said. “Perhaps we have this wrong. Would you like to tell me why you have come here? I’ve met some of you before, of course. You, I think, are from The Daily Express?” he said, speaking to the elderly man.
“That’s right,” was the reply. “And my colleagues are from The Daily Mail and The Sketch. I daresay another bunch will soon be waiting for you outside. We rather hoped that we should be first in the field.”
“What field and for what reason?” Dart Huron asked.
“Now come, Mr. Huron. You know the answer to that,” the man from The Daily Express said. “We have been expecting this for some time, of course but, when we were told the announcement was to be made some time this week, we had to come and see you in