Detective-Sergeant Mullins looked up a little gloomily from his waistcoat button.
"I'm sorry for that," he said.
"So am I, if it would have helped any," said the ex-captain of territorials heartily. "But what's the point, sergeant?"
"Well, you see, sir," said the Scotland Yard man, "with all due respect to the dead, Sir Harris fancied himself a bit, he did, along those lines. Some queer notions he had, sir—and stubborn, as you might say. He's got himself into trouble more than once, and the Yard's had its own time with him. He's been warned, sir, often enough—and if he was alive, he wouldn't say he hadn't. It's what he's been told might happen. There's no other reason, as far as we've gone, why he should have been murdered. It looks the likely thing that he went too far this time, and got to know more than some crook took a notion it was safe to have him know."
Paul Cremarre smiled inscrutably at the Scotland Yard man.
"I take back what I said about it being a purposeless murder, sergeant," he murmured.
"Yes, sir," said Detective-Sergeant Mullins. "Well, I fancy that's all, gentlemen. We were hoping that if matters had reached as grave a state as that—that is, if Sir Harris ever realised how deep he'd got in—it would have been a bit on his mind, as you might say, and in the course of a long conversation with a friend, sir, a hint of it, even if he didn't go any further, might have cropped up." He buttoned his coat. "You're quite sure, Captain Newcombe, thinking it over, that there wasn't anything mentioned, even casually like, that would give us a clue?"
"Quite, sergeant!" said the ex-captain of territorials emphatically.
"Well, I'll be going, then," said the Scotland Yard man. "And sorry to have taken up your time, sir."
"You've done nothing but your duty," said Captain Francis Newcombe pleasantly. He rang the bell. "Runnells, bring Sergeant Mullins a drink!" And with a smile to the Scotland Yard man: "Will it be Scotch, sergeant?"