“He certainly seems to have been a queer lot,” the Inspector declared. “By the bye,” he continued, “you said something, I believe, about his having had more money with him than was found upon his person.”
“That’s so,” Mr. Coulson admitted. “I know he deposited a pocketbook with the purser, and I happened to be standing by when he received it back. I noticed that he had three or four thousand-dollar bills, and there didn’t seem to be anything of the sort upon him when he was found.”
The Inspector made a note of this.
“You believe yourself, then, Mr. Coulson,” he said, closing his pocketbook, “that the murder was committed for the purpose of robbery?”
“Seems to me it’s common sense,” Mr. Coulson replied. “A man who goes and takes a special train to London from the docks of a city like Liverpool—a city filled with the scum of the world, mind you—kind of gives himself away as a man worth robbing, doesn’t he?”
The Inspector nodded.
“That’s sensible talk, Mr. Coulson,” he acknowledged. “You never heard, I suppose, of his having had a quarrel with any one?”
“Never in my life,” Mr. Coulson declared. “He wasn’t the sort to make enemies, any more than he was the sort to make friends.”
The Inspector took up his hat. His manner now was no longer inquisitorial. With the closing of his notebook a new geniality had taken the place of his official stiffness.
“You are making a long stay here, Mr. Coulson?” he asked.