“Surely you’re not coming round to Miss Blow’s murder theory, are you?”
“I don’t know. It’s a very queer business. Is Red—that’s the man’s name, isn’t it—respectable?”
“I don’t know. I never saw the man in my life. I know nothing about him except that he paid his rent and came here in a motor-car. That looks as if he had money, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t understand it,” said Mr. Goddard. “The sergeant and Cole certainly went to Rosivera to-day. I don’t see what was to stop them getting there. They weren’t likely to lose their way. They certainly haven’t come back.”
“What does Jimmy O’Loughlin say? I suppose you’ve consulted him.”
“Jimmy thinks,” said Mr. Goddard, “that the sergeant’s afraid to come back on account of Miss Blow. But that’s all rot, of course.”
“I’m not at all sure that Jimmy’s not right. He’s a very shrewd man, Jimmy O’Loughlin. I shouldn’t wonder a bit——”
“But what the deuce am I to do?”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Lord Manton. “We’ll make a descent in force on Rosivera to-morrow. You shall collect all the police you possibly can, fifty of them, if there are fifty available. We’ll take all the ladies interested in the matter in my waggonette. Jimmy O’Loughlin and I will accompany the army in the capacity of civil magistrates, each of us armed with a Riot Act and a writ of Habeas Corpus. We’ll make that fellow Red sit up if he’s been at any games.”
“I really think we’ll have to. It seems very absurd, but what else are we to do? I’ve been harried with telegrams from everybody in Dublin Castle all day. The Inspector-General is coming down here to-morrow, though I don’t see what on earth he thinks he’ll be able to do.”