“In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only with his own consent.”
“Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up with it now.”
“It wasn’t meant as a joke,” returned Thrush, and drank deep while his client sipped. “If it had come off it would have been the coup of my career; as it didn’t—quite—one must laugh it off at one’s own expense. Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made him think he’d done?”
“Of course.”
“Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same thing?”
“Not you, Thrush?”
“Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He jumped to it from scratch!”
“He connected Tony with the Park murder?”
“From the word ‘go.’ ”
“On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s dream?”