The landlord beamed. "Why, Eh'm sure Eh do congratulate you, Mr. Travers! Us thought nothing against 'ee, mind, zir! Only 'twas said 'ereabouts — you know what gossip is! — " he lowered his voice, "only that you'd paid poor Mr. Depping a visit, and a lot of dimp people—"
"You're telling me? Listen." He drained his glass, set it down with a thump, and poked the proprietor in the chest. "I was never inside his house. The man they thought was me was old Nick Depping himself, got up into a fancy disguise so nobody would recognize him. Tell that to your friends, and your dumb flatfeet too"
"Zir?"
"It was Depping, I tell you! Trying to tell me I'm a liar?"
The landlord was so obviously puzzled that even Spinelli did not press it. He grew confidential, almost paternal.
"Listen. I’ll tell you how it was. Old Nick Depping wanted to get out of his house; see? Never mind why. I’m not telling that. But he wanted to get out of his house; see? All right. He goes up to London and buys a make-up box at a theatrical outfitter's, and he goes to a ready-made clothes store and buys a suit there. All right; you can do all that without anybody being suspicious of you. But Nick was an artist, see? — a real artist; I’ll give him credit for that. And, if he left any footprints anywhere, he didn't want the footprints traced to him. He even wanted to have the shoes a different size from his own. All right! But you can't go into a shoe store and ask for a pair of shoes three or four sizes too large. That's nutty; and they're going to remember it in the store, and, if there's any trouble afterwards, maybe the dicks can trace you; see?"
Spinelli leaned across the bar and thrust a flushed countenance within an inch of the landlord's. He went on rather hoarsely:
"So what does Nick do? He goes up to that big place they call The Grange; the one with the lousy furniture in it, and pictures I wouldn't put in my coal cellar. Well, he goes up one afternoon with a satchel that's supposed to have books in it; get me? He goes back to a room where they store a lot of junk, and swipes an old pair of somebody's shoes to wear; and then if he does happen to make any footprints anywhere, why, it's going to be just too bad for the bird who owns the shoes. See? That's what Nick does, and all because he wants too get out of his house and. ”
Hugh did not hear the last part of the sentence. He was so startled that he almost faced round and spoke to Spinelli. He remained motionless, his empty glass to his lips, staring at a placard behind the bar whereon a high-stepping figure of Johnny Walker grinned back with a rather sardonic leer. Down came one of the props of the case, shattering every hypothesis built on it; a clue blown up, shot to pieces; ashes and smoke: viz., the mysterious shoes that belonged to Morley Standish. All sorts of explanations had been, and might be, propounded. The simplest explanation of all — that Depping himself had used them for his masquerade — had been overlooked or at least not mentioned. What became now of his father's fantastic picture of Henry Morgan playing poltergeist in order to steal the shoes?
He risked a short sideways glance at Spinelli. The latter was too preoccupied; too malicious, too full of new alcoholic courage, to greedy of the limelight, even to turn his head or lower his voice. Spinelli laughed. His foot groped vainly for a rail under the bar.