Before Joan and Ellery parted, they arranged what each should do next to clear up the remaining difficulties. Joan was to test her theory about the coachyard, while Ellery was to investigate the circumstances surrounding the extraordinary attempt of Woodman and Walter Brooklyn to raise a loan in anticipation of Sir Vernon’s death. Woodman had approached Sir John Bunnery; and Sir John’s subsequent letter to Sir Vernon seemed to make it worth while to find out what information he possessed. Ellery made up his mind to go and see Sir John; and Joan furnished him with a convenient pretext for doing so. Sir Vernon had determined to get his new will into proper legal form at the earliest possible moment, and had told Joan that Woodman must on no account be allowed to do the drafting of it. She had suggested that Sir John Bunnery might be called in, and Sir Vernon had readily agreed. Joan therefore commissioned Ellery to call on Sir John, and ask him to come to Liskeard House at his earliest convenience for the purpose of drawing up Sir Vernon’s new will.
Ellery wrote on his card, “From Sir Vernon Brooklyn,” and, aided by the name, was speedily shown into Sir John Bunnery’s private office. Sir John was not at all the popular idea of what “the bookmaker’s attorney” ought to be. He was a small, dried-up old man, with very sharp little eyes that darted to and fro with disconcerting suddenness. He had a way of sitting very still, and looking his visitors up and down with those bright little eyes, until they felt that no detail of their appearance—and perhaps none of their thoughts—had escaped observation. Sir John made Ellery nervous, and, after a few sentences, he found that he had completed his ostensible business, without getting anywhere near the matter he had really come to discuss. He shifted uneasily in his chair.
Sir John Bunnery evidently read his thoughts. “And now, young man, there is something else you want to say to me, isn’t there?”
This was not at all the way in which Ellery had expected to conduct the interview. He had hoped to discover what he wanted casually, in the course of conversation, without giving Sir John, who was, after all, a friend of Woodman’s, any hint of what he wanted to know. But Sir John was manifestly a man whom it was not easy to pump. Ellery was wondering what to reply when the old lawyer spoke again,—
“I have refused Woodman that advance. Is that what you wanted to know?”
Ellery said that it was not, and then realised that he had admitted wanting to know something.
“Well, what is it then?” said Sir John.
There was nothing for it but either to get out of the room without the information that was needed or to make Sir John Bunnery, at least in part, a confidant. Ellery rapidly chose the latter course, and elected to go to work the most direct way.
“I want to know precisely what Carter Woodman said to you when he asked you to lend him that money. Do you know what he wanted it for?”
“You want to know a lot, young man. And why should I tell you all this?”