Immediately after lunch he set out once more on his wearisome round.
It was nearly eight o’clock before he returned, and then it was with the glad face and bounding step of one to whom success has come, doubly sweet because almost hopelessly deferred. Anthony and the inspector, half-way through their supper, looked round in astonishment as the remaining member of their trio, almost unrecognisable beneath the enormous grin which decorated his countenance, burst in upon them like a dervish.
“I’ve done it!” shouted the dervish. “Alone, unaided, unhonoured and unsung, frowned upon by the official police and snubbed by half the small boys in Ludmouth, have I done it!” He produced a small piece of paper from his pocket-book and laid it with a flourish beside the inspector’s plate.
“There’s a present for you, Inspector Moresby,” he said. “The thumb-print of Mrs. Vane’s murderer. Anthony, carve me a double portion of that veal-and-ham pie, please!”
Chapter XVII.
Shocking Ignorance of a Clergyman
“Of course,” said Roger, disposing of a large mouthful of veal-and-ham pie, “of course when I say murderer, I may be exaggerating a trifle.”
“You haven’t told me yet who he is, sir,” said the inspector patiently. It was the seventh time he had said something like this, and his curiosity was still ungratified.
“Perhaps it would be safer to say, for the present, that it’s the thumb-print of a man who knows how Mrs. Vane met her death,” went on Roger, who was taking a malicious joy in deliberately thwarting his professional rival’s inquisitiveness. “Anyhow, there it is.”
“Did you say it was a man in the village?” asked the inspector innocently.
“He that searches diligently shall find,” Roger replied irrelevantly, “and he that is on the right tack shall make all the thrilling discoveries. Likewise, to him that hath shall be given; so give me some more of this excellent pie, Anthony.—No, a slice just about twice as big as the one you’re meditating.”