I bowed. “Very well, sir; and I only wish I were as mistaken about the character of this gentleman whom you have admitted to your acquaintance and your hospitality.”
Sir Calvin looked at Le Sage, who sat still all this time with a perfectly unruffled countenance. He laughed now good humouredly, and bent forward to take a pinch of snuff.
“Come, come, Mr. Bickerdike,” he expostulated, brushing the dust from his waistcoat; “of what do you accuse me?”
“That is soon said,” I answered, “and said more easily than one can explain the general impression of underhandedness one receives from you. I intend to be explicit, and I accuse you to your face of having secretly left your room one midnight, when the house was asleep” (I gave the date) “and stolen a paper from Sir Calvin’s desk here.”
He looked at me oddly.
“To be sure,” he said. “Do you know, Mr. Bickerdike, your half-face looking round the post that night reminded me so ludicrously of those divided portraits one sees in picture-restorers’ shops that I was near bursting into laughter.”
“You may have eyes in your ears,” I cried, rallying from the shock; “but that is not an answer to my charge.”
He turned to Sir Calvin: “The sixty-four Knight move problem: you remember: I told you that, not being able to sleep, I had come down to borrow it from your desk, and work it out in the small hours.”
The General nodded, and looked at me.
“Upon my word, Bickerdike,” he said, “you mustn’t bring these unfounded charges. I don’t know what’s put this stuff about the Baron into your head; but you must understand that he’s my very good friend, and much better known to me than he seems to be to you. Come, if I were you, I’d just apologize and say no more about it.”