"That's it. I tell you straight, I often think the governor's a bit-" Bowers tapped his forehead significantly. "Ruddy queer sense of humour 'e's got, and I never know whether he means what he says or not. So I do whatever he says. See? I'll tell you how it was.
"This morning after breakfast, as I say, he said he was going to Bristol in the evening. I says, 'Shall I pack a bag?' He says, 'No, I won't need a bag,' — and laughed again. I says, 'You'll be at Dr. Keppel's, I suppose?' (This Dr. Keppel is another Squarehead, sort of a professor, who lives in a hotel at Bristol.) He says, 'Yes, I'll be at Dr. Keppel's, but I don't think Dr. Keppel will be there; in fact, I've got every hope that he'll be out.' Then was when he told me we might have a visitor tonight. I ask you!"
The reason for Bowers's loquacity I could see in his own uneasiness. He was smoothing at his dark, slicked-down hair, and peering into corners of the hall. But this gave a new turn to possibilities in the business. It would appear that Hogenauer himself might be intending to do a spot of burglary, or at least secret visiting: that he was going to pay a quiet call at Keppel's hotel when he could make sure Keppel was out: and that the `visitor' he expected here might be Keppel himself, brought on some wild-goose mission. Why?
Such a possibility had clearly occurred to the far from dull-minded Bowers.
"So I thinks to myself," says Bowers, with a sort of pounce: "the governor goes to Bristol, and Keppel comes here. Eh! The more so, mindyer, because Keppel's right here in Moreton Abbot — or he was this morning, anyway. Keppel came here this morning, dropped in about eleven o'clock, and had a talk with the governor. I don't know what they said, because they talked in German, but the governor gave Keppel a little packet like an envelope folded in half. Very friendly, they was. Oh, yes. Of course, it's none of my business, but, I tell you straight, I didn't like it."
I gave an imitation of a man pondering heavily.
"But your governor," I said, "told you to come in early to-night. You didn't come in very early, did you?"
"No, and that's just it," cried Bowers, with a sort of defensive aggressiveness. "Because why! I'll tell you. Because, the last thing my governor said this afternoon… I went out before he did, just after I gave 'im his tea… the last thing he said, in that quiet glassy-eyed way of his, was: 'Yes,
Harry, I think you may have a visitor to-night, but I doubt if you'll see him'."
There was a pause. It was not a comfortable pause.