“Exactly,” answered Baddeley. “Don’t you agree with me?”
Anthony meditated for a moment. “Perhaps. It’s certainly possible—but on the other hand—perhaps not. I might and I mightn’t.”
Our interrogator then came back to Considine.
“Did you hear anything after you heard this door shut, Mr. Considine?”
“No! I simply turned over and went to sleep again.”
“Think very carefully, sir. Pardon my insistence, but very often things come to us out of our sleeping moments if we only concentrate sufficiently.” His eyes fixed Jack, and held him and once again I caught a glance of the man’s efficiency. There was no brilliance there, no subtlety beyond ordinary astuteness, no flashing intuition bringing in its wake an inspired moment, but merely a species of machine-like efficiency. I have repeated the word, I am aware, but I can think of no other, at the moment, that so adequately expresses the quality that I perceived. I contrasted him with Anthony Bathurst. One of the product of “the Force,” hard-bitten in the school of personal industry, bringing a well-ordered brain to bear on the problem that confronted us, the other, public school and ’Varsity all over, with a brilliant intellect nursed by the terminology of these institutions, treating the affair as an adventure after his own heart. What would Baddeley have done, I found myself wondering, with the other’s opportunities? Where would Anthony have cleared a passage, had he been born Baddeley? My musings were short-lived.
“Let me have that letter again, Roper?” demanded the Inspector. And once again was the letter produced and inspected. And once again was the writing unrecognized; it conveyed no more to Considine than it had done to us.
Then Anthony surprised me. “Do you mind if I take another glance at it?” he asked. “Something has just come to my mind.”
Baddeley looked at him shrewdly and curiously for a moment.
“Certainly,” he agreed, and passed the letter over.