The question sounded abrupt, and, perhaps for that reason, it seemed to rouse Ames’s resentment.
“That’s about all there is to tell,” he declared, frowning. “I came home from a dinner party next door, about eleven o’clock. I chatted with Mr. Tracy for a while and then we both went upstairs to bed. That’s all.”
He glared about him, as if he were being imposed on to have to testify at all. I tried to analyze the man. He had been insistent that Keeley Moore should take the case. Was this a gigantic bluff? I mean, could it be that Ames was himself the murderer, and sought to escape suspicion by frankly asking the detective to solve the mystery? Did he think he had so covered his tracks that he was safe from even the astute cleverness of Keeley Moore?
If this were the case, he was greatly mistaken. I had no idea whether Ames was the murderer or not, but if so, then he stood no chance of escaping the detection of my friend.
But Hart was proceeding, in a suave, pleasant way, calculated to soothe Ames’s antagonism.
“You were Mr. Tracy’s best friend?” he asked.
“That’s saying a great deal, but I was certainly one of them. We have known each other from boyhood, and though we bandied words now and then, we never had a real quarrel in our lives.”
“You owed him money?”
Harper Ames’s eyes flashed, and he seemed about to fly into a rage. Then, apparently thinking better of it, he calmed down and said, quietly, but sullenly still:
“Yes, though I don’t know that it’s your business. Tracy has let me owe him money for a long time, and as he had no objections to it, I can’t see your right to inquire about it.”