I hesitated. Ascher’s eyes were fixed on me, and there was a curiously wistful expression in them. I could not understand what he wanted me to say.
“I think,” I said, “that Gorman’s plan sounds feasible, that it ought to work.”
“But your own opinion of it?” said Ascher.
He spoke with a certain gentle insistency. I could not very well avoid making some answer.
“We are able to judge for ourselves,” he said, “whether it will work. But the plan itself—what do you think of it?”
“Well,” I said, “I’m a modern man. I have accepted all the ideas and standards of my time and generation. I can hardly give you an opinion that I could call my own, but if my father’s opinion would be of any use to you—— He was an old-fashioned gentleman, with all the rather obsolete ideas about honour which those people had.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Gorman.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “He’s been dead for fifteen years. Still I’m sure I could tell you what he’d have said about this.”
“I do not think,” said Stutz, “that we need consider the opinion of Sir James Digby’s father, who has been dead for fifteen years.”
“I quite agree with you,” I said. “It would be out of date, hopelessly.”