“My dear!” murmured the youthful Public Prosecutor, and forgot there was such a thing as murder in the world.
John Bennett was glad to see him, eager to tell the news of his triumph. He had a drawer full of press cuttings, headed “Wonderful Nature Studies. Remarkable Pictures by an Amateur,” and others equally flattering. And there had come to him a cheque which had left him gasping.
“This means—you don’t know what it means to me, Mr. Gordon,” he said, “or Captain Gordon—I always forget you’ve got a military title. When that boy of mine recovers his senses and returns home, he’s going to have just the good time he wants. He’s at the age when most boys are fools—what I call the showing-off age. Sometimes it runs to pimples and introspection, sometimes to the kind of life that a man doesn’t like to look back on. Ray has probably taken the less vicious course.”
It was a relief to hear the man speak so. Dick always thought of Ray Bennett as one who had committed the unforgiveable sin.
“This time next year I’m going to be an artist of leisure,” said John Bennett, who looked ten years younger.
Dick offered to drive him to town, but this he would not hear of. He had to make a call at Dorking. Apparently he had letters addressed to him in that town (Dick learnt of this from the girl) concerning his mysterious errands. Dick left Horsham with a heart lighter than he had brought to that little country town, and was in the mood to rally Inspector Elk for the profound gloom which had settled on him since he had discovered that there was not sufficient evidence to try Balder for his life.
CHAPTER XXX
THE TRAMPS
LEW BRADY sat disconsolately in Lola Bassano’s pretty drawing-room, and a more incongruous figure in that delicate setting it was impossible to imagine. A week’s growth of beard had transfigured him into the most unsavoury looking ruffian, and the soiled old clothes he wore, the broken and discoloured boots, the grimy shirt, no less than his own personal uncleanliness of appearance made him a revolting object.
So Lola thought, eyeing him anxiously, a foreboding of trouble in her heart.