I did not know, so I ignored Godfrey’s question.
“And in the second place Crossan wouldn’t debauch the whole place by making the men drunk night after night on smuggled spirits. Why, only three weeks ago he spoke to me seriously about the glass of claret I drink at dinner. He did it quite respectfully and entirely for my good. I respected him for it.”
“He’s up to some mischief,” said Godfrey, sulkily, “and it won’t be too pleasant for you, Excellency, when the Inland Revenue people find out, and you are let in for a prosecution. I tell you that every night for the last week men have been going up to that store after dark, twenty or thirty of them, truculent, disrespectful blackguards out of the Orange Lodge. I’ve watched them.”
“Did you watch them coming out again?”
“I did, twice,” said Godfrey. “They didn’t go home till nearly one o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t stop up every night, so I only saw them twice.”
“Well,” I said, “were they drunk?”
“No,” said Godfrey, unwillingly, “they were not. They walked quite straight.”
“That explodes your theory then. If they had been drinking smuggled spirits for hours and hours, they would have been drunk.”
“They were at some mischief,” said Godfrey.
“They were probably getting up a concert,” I said.