“Come, Mr. Trafford; you can’t deal with every one the same way. If you want to find out anything from me, you mustn’t go at it as if I was a country bumpkin whom your very name would scare.”
“Bless you, I don’t,” said Trafford. “Now if you were a country bumpkin, as you are pleased to put it, I’d lead up to the matter gently and so have it all out of you before you knew what I was at. Not being a country bumpkin, I come at you fair and square to save your time and mine too. What were you doing in Millbank on the evening of the tenth? You weren’t at any of the hotels. You weren’t seen by any of the men who were likely to see you.”
“So you’ve peddled it all over Millbank that I was there that night, have you?” demanded the other, angrily.
Trafford looked at him with a mixture of amusement and spleen. At last he answered:
“That isn’t the way I do my work. I don’t need to give away what I know to find out what other folks know. There’s nobody in Millbank any the wiser for the enquiries I’ve made.”
“Well, if you know so much and are so cunning, you know that I got there at eight o’clock and left at midnight——”
“Dropping off at the Bridge stop before the train crossed the river, and swinging on to the front end of the second car as the train was pulling out of the station, coming out of the shadow of Pettingill’s potato warehouse to do so, so as not to be seen and recognized,” Trafford continued.
The first part was a shrewd guess, but evidently it hit the mark, for the lawyer wheeled about and faced him before saying:
“The devil! To what am I indebted for such close surveillance?”
“Well,” drawled Trafford, with an irritating air of indifference, that he could at times assume, “perhaps you don’t know that a matter of some importance happened in Millbank that night and has led to our looking up all the strangers that were in town, especially those who did not seem to want to be seen.”