“No,” Alec said uncompromisingly. “I’m not.”
“But dash it all, I’ve proved it to you. You can’t shove all my proofs on one side in that off-hand way. The whole thing stands to reason. You can’t get away from it.”
“If you say that Jefferson killed Stanworth,” Alec proceeded with obstinate deliberation, “then I’m perfectly sure you’re wrong. That’s all.”
“But why?”
“Because I don’t believe he did,” said Alec, with an air of great wisdom. “He’s not the sort of fellow to do a thing like that. I suppose I’ve got a sort of intuition about it,” he added modestly.
“Intuition be hanged!” Roger retorted, with a not unjustified irritation. “You can’t back your blessed intuition against proofs like the ones I’ve just given you.”
“But I do,” Alec said simply. “Every time,” he added, with a careful attention to detail.
“Then I wash my hands of you,” said Roger shortly.
For a time they paced side by side in silence. Alec appeared to be pondering deeply, and Roger was undisguisedly huffy. After all, it is a little irksome to solve in so ingenious yet so convincing a way a problem of such apparently mysterious depth, only to be brought up against a blank wall of disbelief founded on so unstable a foundation as mere intuition. One’s sympathy is certainly with Roger at that moment.
“Well, anyhow, what are you going to do about it?” Alec asked, after some minutes’ reflection. “Surely you’re not going to tell the police without troubling to verify anything further, are you?”