"Eh?" asked Bert sharply.
"Oh, nothing."
"Then don't gas. Look here. What I've said is true enough. Hugh didn't see what I've mentioned. Well," said Bert, with cold scorn, "no one expects anything better from Hugh."
"I say! Look here!"
"But Clive saw it, for a wonder," the elder of the lads went on without faltering. "So it's true enough. Three of those chaps are impostors. The fourth keeps house down here for 'em, and lets 'em know how things are going."
"What things?" asked Hugh sulkily.
"What things! Why, who's away from home, or going away shortly. Who's a big swell, with lots of cash and lots of jewels. What the police are doing. Whether they suspect anyone in particular. What clue they have to the perpetrators——"
"How much?" asked Clive.
"Perpetrators. Fellows who did the job," said Bert, with cold scorn again. In fact, his tones were icy. He might have been speaking to little children. "What clue they have to the perpetrators of the burglaries, and what chance there is of cracking other cribs."
His grip of the situation was really amazing. Clive remembered all of a sudden that Bert had already made quite a name for himself in the school Debating Society. It was strange, he had often thought, that a fellow usually so retiring and so dreamy should be ready to get on to his feet and speak before an audience. He himself would have shivered in his shoes if called upon to debate. Yet Bert turned not so much as a hair.