"Don't you think he'll discover that to be a deliberate lie, Mr. Green?"
"Well," said Green doggedly, "we can't tell him what has happened, and we've got to satisfy him somehow. I promised to let him know something, and it's true that a body has been found. I asked Wrington. And it's true that it's not Goldenburg."
"Oh, all right, let it go. You'd better arrange the laundry inquiry first thing in the morning. Now let me alone. I want to think."
CHAPTER XXXV
Sir Hilary Thornton had come to Heldon Foyle's stocktaking. The superintendent, with a mass of papers on the desk in front of him, talked swiftly, now and again referring to the typewritten index of reports and statements in order to verify some point. The Assistant Commissioner occasionally interpolated some question, but for the most part he remained gravely silent. Foyle recapitulated the events of the preceding day.
"It was sheer foolishness, Sir Hilary," he admitted bitterly. "If we hadn't blundered Grell would have been in our hands now. As it is, we have to begin the search for him all over again."
Through the open window came the rumble of a motor-omnibus used by the police to test applicants for licenses. Thornton swung the window close.
"You still think that Grell had a hand in it?"