The detective scowled to himself.
"Is it true—tell him," shouted Doyle, brandishing a menacing fist in Rascon's face.
The detective, himself a bulldozer when he had the chance, was bulldozed, even as a German might be frightened by a taste of his own frightfulness.
"N-no," he stammered.
"But had you made similar reports to Mr. Wilford?" persisted Kennedy, with some purpose.
"Oh yes—but not this one. She paid me for this. I played fair—I did," he almost whined.
"Hm! I see," measured Kennedy. "Mr. Wilford got similar reports—and believed them?"
Rascon nodded a deprecating acquiescence. "I suppose so. He never kicked or asked questions. I guess it was what he wanted to know—eh?"
It was not the flash of the detective's cynical lying that surprised me, but Craig's remark and what might be implied in it by the narrowing of Craig's eyes as he asked it and received the answer that he had apparently expected.
I glanced at Craig hastily. What did he mean by the inflection of his voice and by the look?