“If it had been necessary, Captain Granet,” he said coldly, “I should have been able to convince you that I was acting under authority. As it is, I wish you good-morning.”
Granet hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
“Good-morning, Major!”
He made his way down to the lane, which was still crowded with villagers and loungers. He was received with a shower of questions as he climbed into the car.
“Not much damage done that I can hear,” he told them all. “The corner of the house caught fire and the lawn looks like a sand-pit.”
He was driven in silence back to the Dormy House. When he arrived there the place was deserted. The other men were lunching at the golf club. He made his way slowly to the impromptu shed which served for a garage. His own car was standing there. He looked all around to make sure that he was absolutely alone. Then he lifted up the cushion by the driving-seat. Carefully folded and arranged in the corner were the horn-rimmed spectacles and the silk handkerchief of the man who was lying at Market Burnham with a bullet through his forehead.
CHAPTER XXIV
Mr. Gordon Jones rose to his feet. It had been an interesting, in some respects a momentous interview. He glanced around the plain but handsomely furnished office, a room which betrayed so few evidences of the world-flung power of its owner.
“After all, Sir Alfred,” he remarked, smiling, “I am not sure that it is Downing Street which rules. We can touch our buttons and move armies and battleships across the face of the earth. You pull down your ledger, sign your name, and you can strike a blow as deadly as any we can conceive.”