Hubert showed no embarrassment. He replaced the bottle, patted in the cork, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, and, after giving them something between a nod and a formal bow, walked out of the room with such poise that nobody spoke a word to him.
"For the love of Esau," said H.M., pushing his spectacles back up so that he could look through them, "who was that?"
"Mr. Hubert Fane, sir. Mr. Fane's uncle."
"Uncle, eh?" said H.M. His eyes wandered to the notebook protruding from Courtney's pocket, and powerful emotions appeared to arise in him. "So that's his uncle, eh? Well, well, well! How very interestin'. I don't suppose he's ever been warned off the Turf, has he?"
Agnew jumped to attention.
"I don't know why you should say that, Sir Henry. But, just as it happens, the man who called to see Mr. Hubert Fane tonight was a bookmaker."
"You don't say?" observed H.M., musing with a darkly sinister expression which seemed to distend his whole face. But this clouded over. "No," he said. "No. There couldn't be two such crooks, not in the whole world. I got to let my reason govern me." He turned round. "You, sir, you're Dr. Rich?"
"I am."
"Sit down, will you?"
The dining room was of similar proportions to the back drawing room. A cluster of electric candles depended from the ceiling. The furniture, a genuine Jacobean set, showed rich and black in its carving against the cream-painted walls. Above the sideboard, over the silver and a bowl of fruit, hung one painting: a seventeenth-century child's head done on wood, whose fine tracing of cracks caught the light.