"Madeleine gurgled. "But he won't, will he?" she protested, swinging on the gate. "And what's more, I wouldn't be mean like you, when you said you'd put the goldfish bowl there instead of a cushion. I mean, that isn't nice, is it?"
"Dawn of my existence," said her husband querulously, "all this is beside the point. Whether nature in her abundance has equipped His Reverence with a lower dorsal frontage sufficiently spacious to withstand the shocks of sliding down bannisters all over England, is not only beside the point, but savors of indelicacy." He looked at Standish, and his face suddenly clouded. He moved the loose spectacles up and down his nose, uneasily. "Look here, sir. We don't — well, the bishop is right. We don't take this very seriously, I admit. If it weren't for what Betty would feel about it, I shouldn't be very much cut up about it. I know; de mortuis, and all that. But after all, sir — old Depping was rather a blister, wasn't he?"
Standish punched at the steering-wheel, hesitantly.
"Oh, I say!" he protested…
"Right," said Morgan in a colorless voice. "I know it's none of my business. All I wanted to tell you was that I was to look out for you when you arrived and tell you that Inspector Murch has gone home for something to eat; he said to tell you he would be back directly… He allowed me to prowl about the Guest House with him, and we found a couple of things.
"And may I ask, young man," said the bishop, stung, "on what authority you did that?"
"Well, sir, I suppose it was rather like your own. There wasn't much to be seen there. But we did find the gun. I should say a gun, though there isn't much doubt it's the one. The autopsy hasn't been performed, but the doctor said it was a thirty-eight bullet. The gun is a thirty-eight Smith & Wesson revolver… You will find it," said Morgan, in the negligent manner which would have been employed by John Zed, diplomatist-detective, "in the right-hand drawer of Depping's desk."
"Eh?" demanded Standish. "In Depping's desk? What the devil is it doing there?"
"It's Depping's gun," said Morgan; "we found it there." He noticed that he had a cocktail in his hand, and drank it off. Then he balanced the glass on the edge of the gate, thrust his hands deep into the pockets of the red-and-white blazer, and tried to assume a mysterious profundity like John Zed's. But it was difficult. For the first time Donovan saw the excitability of his nature. He could imagine him striding up and down the lawn with a cocktail in one hand, shifting his spectacles up and down his nose, and hurling out theories to a beaming wife. He said:
"There's no doubt it was his gun, sir. His name on a litde silver plate on the grip. And his firearms license was in the same drawer, and the numbers tallied… By the way, two shots had been recently fired."