“Do you not think, my friend,” he said, “that under the circumstances it would be decent of us to offer to terminate our visit? Supposing we both, here and now, address Sir Calvin on the subject?”
I was very much annoyed. “Baron,” I said, “I am not accustomed to seek advice in matters of conduct, and I certainly shall not do as you propose. Apart from the question of deserting my friend in a crisis, I think that any suggestion of our leaving now would look like a desire to avoid inquiry—which I, for my part, am far from wishing to do—and would bear a very bad complexion. You can act as you like; but it is my intention to see this thing through.”
“O, very well!” he said. “Then I will speak for myself alone.”
Why should he wish to escape? All my instinctive suspicion of him reawakened on the moment; and I wondered. True, he could not himself have perpetrated the crime; Hugo’s evidence would not permit of such a supposition; but could he not be somehow implicated in it as instigator or abettor? I determined then and there to keep a very close observation on M. le Baron.
We entered the room together, since I would not suffer his going in alone to misrepresent me. Sir Calvin was there, with his son and the detective. I saw the last for the first time. He was quite the typical Hawkshaw, and handsome at that—a lithe man of middle height, with a keen, dark, aquiline face, and clean-shaven jaws and chin. I could have thought him a young man for his work and reputation; he did not look more than thirty-five, and might have been less; but about his mental ability, if one could judge by indications, there was no question. A certain rather truculent dandyism in his dress contrasted oddly with this intellectuality of feature; it showed itself a little over-emphatic in the matter of trouser-crease and collar and scarf-pin, and it tilted his black plush Homburg hat, when out of doors, at a slightly theatrical angle. But taste, after all, is a question not of mind but of breeding, and the man who has, like Disraeli, to stand on his head for a living, may be excused a little ostentation in the process. He looked at us both searchingly as we entered.
“This, Sergeant,” said Sir Calvin, “is the Baron Le Sage, whom I mentioned to you as having encountered the unfortunate young woman in the copse a little before——”
The detective nodded. “I should like to ask a question of you, sir.”
Le Sage told what he knew. It was very little, and only of value in so far as it touched upon the evidence of time.
“It must have been a little before half-past two when we met,” he said.
“And shortly after three,” said the detective, turning to Hugo, “when you came by the same path, sir, and had your little talk with her, like this gentleman?”