"Hardly! I don't believe in going to the gutter for inspiration."
"Ah! now you are thinking of MM. Zola and Gondrecourt, my friend; but, dear me, how one thing does lead to another. We are discussing literature instead of murder. Let us return to our first loves. Why didn't you attend the inquest?"
"Because I didn't want to."
"An all-sufficient reason, indeed," remarked Mr. Fanks, drily, making digs at his book with the pencil. "I wonder you weren't called as a witness."
"No necessity. I know nothing of the affair."
"Absolutely nothing?" (interrogative).
"Absolutely nothing." (decisive).
Mr. Fanks twirled his vicious little pencil in his fingers, closed his secretive little book with a snap, and replaced them both in his pocket with a sigh.
"You are a most unsatisfactory medicine, my dear Roger. You have done nothing to cure my detective fever."
"Am I so bad as that? Come now, I'll tell you one thing: I slept in the room next to that of the dead man."