“I had no call, sir.”
“Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So you’d only to describe the finding of the body?”
“That was all, sir.”
“And your description was really largely founded on fact?”
Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman’s shaving elbow. “I told the truth, sir, and nothing but the truth,” said he, with sombre dignity.
“But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs you showed me yesterday?”
“There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must have picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn’t on the actual scene of the murder.”
“That’s all right, Mullins. I don’t see what they could possibly have to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your being the one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what they’re worth, it’s the last kind of case that I should dream of touching with a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won’t require you at the adjourned inquest?”
“They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite convenient,” replied Mullins deferentially. “The police were very stingy with their evidence to-day; they’ve still to produce the fatal bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.”
Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took as little real interest as he professed in the case which was being thrust upon him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in shaving the corners of a delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the whole face emerging from the lather, as a cast from its clay, would have delighted any eye but its own. It was fat and flabby as the rest of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection of chins to shave; and yet anybody but himself must have recognised the invincible freshness of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as an earnest of inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh. Great round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in itself might have prevented the superficial observer from taking him any more seriously than he took himself.