“I must have a damn-it if I’m to tell you that,” said Thrush; and the ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which he suited to the oath. “It was one way that occurred to me of putting salt on the lad.”
“Tony?”
“Yes.”
“You puzzle me more and more.”
“Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy, of fine sensibilities, and yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the news of an innocent man’s arrest would bring him into the open as quick as anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed, the rest was elementary. But what’s the good of talking about it? It didn’t come off.”
“It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was going to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn’t accidentally satisfied himself of his own innocence.”
Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of fact that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes blinked keenly behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose underneath twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the drink with the opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished.
“If only I could find that camera!” he cried. “It’s the touchstone of the whole thing, mark my words. If it’s an accomplice who did this thing, he’s got it; even if not——”
He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined his whole flushed face.
“Mullins!” he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat suspicious alacrity. “Get the almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High Water at London Bridge to-day!”