H. M. swelled.
"So you're givin' the old man sauce, are you? Tryin' to sauce me, hey? That's gratitude for you, that is! All right. All right! Now just for that, young man, I won't tell you what I did mean. Haa. Haa, that'll fix you! — Point o' fact, I wasn't thinking about the chimney very much at all."
"Exactly what," said Willard, "does `very much at all' mean, Sir Henry?"
H. M. nodded malevolently. 'I'll tell you what it means. It means what my old friend Richter said when he was conductin' the London orchestra, and the second flute played the same sour note twice over in the same place at rehearsal. And Richter he slammed his baton down on the floor, and he said, `You, secgonde vlutel I can stand your damma nonsense occasionally then and now; but sometimes, always, by God nevairl' That's what I feel about this, and I'm goin' to tell Masters so when he gets here. I didn't come here to get insulted. Now I'm goin' to ask some questions…"
He waddled over to the bed, lifted a comer of the sheet, and made a brief examination. The mere lifting of the sheet brought another atmosphere into this cold room. A little light from the big window at the side of the bed, and flickering with the shadow of snowflakes, fell across a face they had sponged off with water, and whose dark hair had been arranged behind her bead…
Bennett, who had turned away, looked back to see H. M.'s small eyes fixed sharply on him from his wizard-like stoop over that still beauty.
"A quarter past three o'clock," said H. M., "is about the time she died… Now, when you came in here this morning, was the blind on this window up or down? Think back, and make sure."
"It was up. I definitely remember that, because I tried to put up the window to let some air in, and remembered that you weren't supposed to touch anything in cases of this kind."
H. M. replaced the sheet and peered out of the window.
`The windows of somebody's livin'-quarters over the stables are in a direct line with this. You noticed- that, hey?