“Well,” and Haviland’s brow wrinkled, “well, to begin with, his manners are too slick and polished.”
“A traditional trait of Frenchmen.”
“Yes, if real. But his seem artificially, purposely,—oh, fakely polished! Have you seen him, Mr. Stone?”
“No, not yet.”
“When you do, you’ll see what I mean. He has shifty eyes, and he rubs his hands together, and if he’s standing, he half bows with every sentence he utters, and he smirks instead of smiling, and his whole attitude is a fifty-fifty of apology and bumptiousness.”
“Bravo! You’ve given a graphic picture of him at all events. I’ll reserve further consideration of his personality until I have seen him.”
“You believe implicitly all that story of Bates, do you, Mr. Stone?” and Haviland looked dubiously at the Detective.
“Yes, I do, at present. If anything turns up to disprove any part of it I may have to revise my ideas. But just now, it seems to me that Bates told the simple truth. To be sure, he only told it because he feared an accusation of murder, and he knew that to confess to the lesser crime would go far to help him deny the greater.”
“You may be right. But might there not be collusion between Friend Count and Bates?”
“Collusion?”