"And what grounds have you for saying he's not the right man?" demanded Gorby.
Kilsip smiled, and stole softly across the room like a cat.
"You don't think I'm such a fool as to tell you? But you ain't so safe nor clever as you think," and, with another irritating smile, he went out.
"He's a regular snake," said Gorby to himself, as the door closed on his brother detective; "but he's bragging now. There isn't a link missing in the chain of evidence against Fitzgerald, so I defy him. He can do his worst."
At eight o'clock on that night the soft-footed and soft-voiced detective presented himself at Calton's office. He found the lawyer impatiently waiting for him. Kilsip closed the door softly, and then taking a seat opposite to Calton, waited for him to speak. The lawyer, however, first handed him a cigar, and then producing a bottle of whisky and two glasses from some mysterious recess, he filled one and pushed it towards the detective. Kilsip accepted these little attentions with the utmost gravity, yet they were not without their effect on him, as the keen-eyed lawyer saw. Calton was a great believer in diplomacy, and never lost an opportunity of inculcating it into young men starting in life. "Diplomacy," said Calton, to one young aspirant for legal honours, "is the oil we cast on the troubled waters of social, professional, and political life; and if you can, by a little tact, manage mankind, you are pretty certain to get on in this world."
Calton was a man who practised what he preached. He believed Kilsip to have that feline nature, which likes to be stroked, to be made much of, and he paid him these little attentions, knowing full well they would bear their fruit. He also knew that Kilsip entertained no friendly feeling for Gorby, that, in fact, he bore him hatred, and he determined that this feeling which existed between the two men, should serve him to the end he had in view.
"I suppose," he said, leaning back in his chair, and watching the wreaths of blue smoke curling from his cigar, "I suppose you know all the ins and the outs of the hansom cab murder?"
"I should rather think so," said Kilsip, with a curious light in his queer eyes. "Why, Gorby does nothing but brag about it, and his smartness in catching the supposed murderer!"
"Aha!" said Calton, leaning forward, and putting his arms on the table. "Supposed murderer. Eh! Does that mean that he hasn't been convicted by a jury, or that you think that Fitzgerald is innocent?"
Kilsip stared hard at the lawyer, in a vague kind of way, slowly rubbing his hands together.