I'm not a French scholar--I suppose that's French--and as I suppose you are, I'll ask you to translate what's written there.' McKeith pushed aside the man's finger, and taking up the paper carried it to the window, where he stood with his back to Harris, spelling out Lady Bridget's hurriedly written sentences.
He seemed a long time in getting at the sense of what he read.

As a matter of fact, he had only a limited acquaintance with any modern languages except his own.

He had picked up some colloquial German, and once when laid up in hospital, had set himself to read Balzac's PERE GORIOT with the aid of a dictionary.

Thus he had acquired a fairly extensive if somewhat archaic vocabulary.

But Lady Bridget's veiled intimation of Wombo's escape couched in up-to-date and highly idiomatic French which would have been perfectly intelligible to Willoughby Maule, conveyed little to him beyond the fact of a secret understanding between his wife and a man whom he knew had once been her lover.