“Oh, some nigger yarn I suppose,” said Falkner in his superior manner, which always ruffled me.
“Would you be surprised to hear that I obtain a good deal of astonishingly accurate information through the same source, Sewin?” I answered. “In fact there is more than one person to whom it relates, who would be more than a little uncomfortable did they guess how much I knew about them.”
“Oh, then you run a nigger gossip shop as well as a nigger trading shop,” he retorted, nastily.
“But what a very unpleasant thing,” hastily struck in his aunt, anxious to cover his rudeness. “Does that sort of thing happen here often?”
“I never heard of a case before.”
“Probably the niggers murdered him and stowed him away somewhere,” pronounced the irrepressible Falkner.
“Even ‘niggers’ don’t do that sort of thing without a motive, and here there was none. Less by a long way than had it been your case,” I was tempted to add, but didn’t. “No, I own it puzzles me. I shall take a ride over there in a day or two, and make a few enquiries on the spot, just as a matter of curiosity.”
“All the same it looks dashed fishy,” said the Major. “D’you know, Glanton, I’m inclined to think Falkner may have hit it.”
“Nothing’s absolutely impossible,” I answered. “Still, I don’t think that’s the solution.”
“But the police—what do they think of it?”