Arthur Cumberland glanced at the bottle the detective held up, saw the label, saw the shape, and sank limply in his chair, his eyes starting, his jaw falling.
“Where did you get that?” he asked, pulling himself together with a sudden desperate self-possession that caused Sweetwater to cast a quick significant glance at the coroner, as he withdrew to his corner, leaving the bottle on the table.
“That,” answered the district attorney, “was picked up at a small hotel on Cuthbert Road, just back of the markets.”
“I don’t know the place.”
“It’s not far from The Whispering Pines. In fact, you can see the club-house from the front door of this hotel.”
“I don’t know the place, I tell you.”
“It’s not a high-class resort; not select enough by a long shot, to have this brand of liquor in its cellar. They tell me that this is of very choice quality. That very few private families, even, indulge in it. That there were only two bottles of it left in the club-house when the inventory was last taken, that those two bottles are now gone, and that—”
“This is one of them? Is that what you want to say? Well, it may be for all I know. I didn’t carry it there. I didn’t have the drinking of it.”
“We have seen the man and woman who keep that hotel. They will talk, if they have to.”
“They will?” His dogged self-possession rather astonished them. “Well, that ought to please you. I’ve nothing to do with the matter.”