“Why not?”
Tavernake gave the order. He sat on his stool whistling softly to himself.
“Then I suppose,” he said at last, “I must have looked a pretty sort of an ass coming through the wall like a madman.”
Pritchard shook his head.
“You looked just about what you were,” he answered, “a d——d good sort. I'm not playing up to you that it was all pretense. You can never trust that gang. The blackguard outside was in earnest, anyway. After all, you know, they wouldn't miss me if I were to drop quietly out. There 's no one else they 're quite so much afraid of. There 's no one else knows quite as much about them.”
“Well, we'll let it go at that,” Tavernake declared. “You know so much of all these people, though, that I rather wish you 'd tell me something I want very much to know.”
“It's by telling nothing,” the detective replied quickly, “that I know as much as I do. Just one cocktail, eh?”
Tavernake shook his head.
“I drank my first cocktail last night,” he remarked. “I had supper with the professor and his daughter.”
“Not Elizabeth?” Pritchard asked swiftly.