Everybody I meet, Martin thought seems to want to shake hands.
"It was you ringing that alarm-bell?"
Stannard's look was wry. "Yes. For my sins."
Well, then, here was one hand free from attempted murder and one face without hypocrisy. Martin already liked Stannard; he liked the man better now.
"But" Ruth prompted. "Up on the roof?" She made a tentative gesture.
Martin thought he had better get it over. He told them everything, from the time he and Jenny walked through the mist to the time somebody's hands lunged out He could see Master's black notebook, the shorthand travelling steadily. H.M. had sat down near the tall white marble mantelpiece, with its dull-gold clock and its dull-gold candelabra against dark-red walls.
When the recital was finished, neither Ruth nor Stannard commented. They did not even speak. Too much repression! Dangerous! The person who did speak, after studying Martin, was Chief Inspector Masters.
"Field-glasses, eh?" ruminated Masters. "A pair of old field-glasses, on an orange-topped table near the north-west side of the roof!"
"That's right"
"Would it interest you to know, sir, that other witnesses who went up there later didn't see any field-glasses?"