“Ah! Well, he came to remonstrate with me. At least, that was how he phrased it. He seemed to think I had been inserting a spoke into his wheel on various occasions, and it had come to his ears—one wonders how!—that I had spoken of him in opprobrious terms. So I told him that these allegations were true, and he then asserted that he would know how to put a stop to my activities. How he proposed to do any such thing I am unable to tell you, and, of course, we shall now never know what Napoleonic scheme he may have had in mind. I can only say that he failed to convince me that he had evolved any form of counterattack whatsoever. The remonstrance somewhat rapidly deteriorated into sound and fury. He favoured me with a catalogue of the serviced he had rendered to the country, adding, a trifle infelicitously, I felt, a list of the distinguished persons whom he had—as he regrettably put it—forced to play ball with him. After that he became incoherent, and I showed him off the premises.”
“Well, by Jove!” exclaimed the Major, bristling with suspicion. “Seems a queer thing you didn't tell Drybeck and me that you'd had this quarrel with Warrenby!”
“My very dear Major,” said Gavin sweetly, “in the first place, there was no quarrel: I never gratify my enemies by allowing them to lure me into losing my temper. In the second place, I have not so far been conscious of the smallest impulse to confide my minor triumphs to a Drybeck or a Midgeholme. And, in the third, I have long realised that in my not wholly unsuccessful attempts to depress Warrenby's pretensions I have been playing a lone hand.”
“You're the most offensive fellow I have met in all my life!” said the Major, his face by this time richly suffused with colour. “I'll be damned if I'll stand here bandying words with you!”
“No, I didn't think you would,” said Gavin. He watched the Major stride off down the street, and said pensively: “It's a mystery to me that so many persons find it impossible to shake off crashing bores. Did you ever see a fish take the fly more readily?”
Hemingway said, ignoring this question: “What made you dislike Mr. Warrenby so particularly, sir?”
“Sheer antipathy, Chief Inspector. Mixed with a certain amount of atavism. The blood of the Plenmellers arose in me when I saw that repulsive upstart storming every citadel, including the Ainstables'. When he lived, I rarely managed to earn my brother's approval, but now that he is dead I feel sure I'm behaving just as he would have wished. Which is what people so often do, isn't it? There's a moral to be drawn from that, but I beg you won't! Do you want to know any more about Warrenby's ill-advised visit to me, or have you had enough of it?”
“I'd like to know how he thought he could make you stop running him down,” said Hemingway, fixing Gavin with a bright, enquiring gaze.
“So would I, but it was never disclosed. I discount his veiled threat to take me into court on a charge of uttering slander. My imagination boggles at the thought of such a man as Warrenby complaining publicly of the things I've said about him. Not quite the kind of notoriety he craved for, you know!”
“Oh, he did threaten to take you into court, sir?”