"Then I'll tell you all that there is to know," Jack replied. "When I have finished my story, I shall have a few questions to ask you. Get your note-book out."
Rigby had no cause for complaint on the score of Masefield's narrative. In the description of the shot marks and the subsequently missing poster he felt that he had conquered a fine point of the situation. He took another cigarette, and Jack did the same. "Now I'm going to ask you a few questions," the latter said, "and I should not be surprised that in replying to my queries we throw some fresh light on the object of your search. You will recollect meeting me at Carrington's last night?"
"Of course I do. I took you for a fellow quite above that kind of thing--playing the amateur detective."
"Notably, as I was in evening dress. As a matter of fact I had been dining with Spencer Anstruther, and it was in leaving his house that I found the body of the man we had better call Nostalgo. Of course I recognized him by the likeness to the poster. Subsequently Inspector Bates and myself discovered the name of the firm who posted the creation. We went off to see the head of the firm, and he could tell us very little, except that the placards came from some John Smith, who had an account with the City and Provincial Bank. The latter fact accounts for my being at Carrington's last night."
"Exactly. And you asked me to keep my eye on a pretty girl, who was deaf, and who had for attendant cavalier a chap with a moustache like that of the German Emperor."
"I am coming to that," Masefield went on. "I told you that I had been dining with Anstruther. Now these two people left Anstruther's house, for I followed them. I will tell you a more striking thing about them later on, but I want to have my side of the affair cleared up first. Tell me what happened after I left Carrington's with Inspector Bates.
"Well, I kept my eye on these people, as you asked me. I tried to get some information about the fair one from Carrington himself, but he didn't seem to like the subject. He seemed depressed and a little bit uneasy, I thought; said it was a sad case, sort of relation of his, and that the man with the moustache was a foreign count or something of that sort. I wouldn't press the matter, as it would have been in bad taste, you see. But, all the same, I did keep an eye on these people, as you asked me, and the end of it was that I followed them when they left the house. I don't know what made me do it."
"At any rate I'm glad you acted in that manner," Jack said. "Did they go back in the direction of Anstruther's house? Did they take a cab?
"Not in the ordinary acceptance of the word," Rigby explained. "They walked as far as the top of Regent Circus, where a private growler was waiting. The cab was all black, the driver had a black livery. I could not see his face, as it was tied up with a silk handkerchief as if the fellow had toothache or something of that kind. The four-wheeler was evidently waiting for them, for they got in at once."
"Anybody else inside the cab?" Jack asked.