Joshua Broad frowned.
“Sentenced to death this morning? Carter, you say? I didn’t read the story of the murder.”
“There was nothing complicated about it,” said Elk. “Two tramps had a quarrel—I think they got drinking—and one shot the other and was found lying in a drunken sleep by the dead man’s side. There’s practically no evidence; the prisoner refused to make any statement, or to instruct a lawyer—it must have been one of the shortest murder trials on record.”
“Where did this happen?” asked Broad, arousing himself from the reverie into which he had fallen.
“Near Gloucester. There was little in the paper; it wasn’t a really interesting murder. There was no woman in it, so far as the evidence went, and who cared a cent about two tramps?”
He folded the paper and put it down, and for the rest of the meal was engaged in a much more fascinating discussion, the police methods of the United States, on which matter Mr. Broad was, apparently, something of an authority.
The object of the American’s invitation was very apparent. Again and again he attempted to turn the conversation to the man under arrest; and as skilfully as he introduced the subject of Balder, did Elk turn the discussion back to the merits of the third degree as a method of crime detection.
“Elk, you’re as close as an oyster,” said Broad, beckoning a waiter to bring his bill. “And yet I could tell you almost as much about this man Balder as you know.”
“Tell me the prison he’s in?” demanded Elk.
“He’s in Pentonville, Ward Seven, Cell Eighty-four,” said the other immediately, and Elk sat bolt upright. “And you needn’t trouble to shift him to somewhere else, just because I happen to know his exact location; I should be just as well informed if he was at Brixton, Wandsworth, Holloway, Wormwood Scrubbs, Maidstone, or Chelmsford.”