Alec was silent for a moment.
“Hardly done, is it?” he said at last. “Fellow’s private papers and all that, I mean, what?”
“Alec, you sponge-headed parrot!” Roger exclaimed, in tones of the liveliest exasperation. “Really, you are a most maddening person! Here’s a chap murdered under your very nose, and you’re prepared to let the murderer walk away scot-free because you think it isn’t ‘done’ to look through the wretched victim’s private papers. How remarkably pleased Stanworth would be to hear you, wouldn’t he?”
“Of course if you put it like that,” Alec said doubtfully.
“But I do put it like that, you goop! It’s the only way there is of putting it. Come, Alec, do try and be sensible for once in your life.”
“All right then,” Alec said, though not with any vast degree of enthusiasm. “I’m game.”
“That’s more like it. Now look here, my bedroom window is in the front of the house and I can see the morning-room window from it. You go to bed in the ordinary way, and sleep, too, if you like (all the better, in case Jefferson should take it into his head to have a look in at you); and I’ll sit up and watch for the morning-room light to go out. I’m safe enough in any case, as I can always pretend to be working; I’ll put my things out, in fact. Then I’ll wait for an hour after it’s out, to give Jefferson plenty of time to get to sleep; and then I’ll come along and rouse you, and we’ll creep down at our leisure. How about that?”
“Sounds all right,” Alec admitted.
“Then that’s settled,” Roger said briskly. “Well, I think the best thing for you to do is to go to bed at once, yawning loudly and ostentatiously. It will show that you have gone, for one thing; and also it will show that we’re not pow-wowing together out here. We’ve got to remember that those three, in spite of their fair words and friendliness, are bound to be regarding us with the greatest suspicion. They don’t know how much we know, and of course they daren’t give themselves away by trying to find out. But you can be sure that Jefferson has warned the others about that footprint; and I expect that as soon as our backs were turned just now, Mrs. Plant ran into the morning room and recounted our conversation to them. That’s why I pretended to be taken in by her explanation.”
The bowl of Alec’s pipe glowed red in the darkness.