"Spill it, Sandy, spill it!" Hemingway adjured him. "What was he? An old lag?"
"He was not. There was not a thing you could charge him with. I was no more than just made a Sergeant, and set to work with Superintendent Darliston. You will mind that he was given -"
"One of these days you'll drive me nuts!" said Hemingway. "Of course I know! Dangerous Drugs! Was that bird under suspicion?"
"I am telling you: if he was concerned in that droch business, we could not discover it. There was not enough evidence against him to warrant pulling him in for interrogation. He had a sgeul that might have been true. Since then I have never heard tell of him. Indeed, I had forgotten the man until I saw the picture of him in that house."
Hemingway walked on beside him in silence for some fifty yards. "Growing, isn't it?" he said at last. "Ever add two and two together and get five for the answer? No, you wouldn't, because you've got no imagination, but it's what I can see myself doing. All the same, taking your bit of dirt with what I gathered from Lady Nest's way of carrying on, I think this'll bear looking into. When I gave you the Indian sign to clear out, I was backing a hunch. I thought there was a chance Lady Nest might talk, if there was no one but me to listen. She didn't - at least, not as much as I'd have liked; but the hunch was all right. Something Terrible Timothy said put me on to it: I believe she pushed the Haddingtons into society because Mrs. Haddington had a screw on her. Plenty of indiscretions in the Lady Nest's past, I shouldn't wonder. What you tell me makes me ask myself if that mightn't have been it. If Mrs. Haddington knew she was getting drugs from Seaton-Carew - ?"
"Och, mo thruaighe! You never asked that lady if she had had the black put on her?" Grant exclaimed.
"Well, seeing she'd been so open and friendly, I thought I'd take a chance on it," replied Hemingway coolly. "If you're thinking she'll lodge a complaint, you're wrong. She's scared white - particularly of her husband's getting to know anything about it."
The Inspector thought it over for a moment. "If that one knew that his wife was getting drugs - ach, now you have me making two and two five!"
"We won't try to add it up yet. This is a job for Cathercott and his merry men: he can go over Seaton-Carew's flat. Sometimes I think those chaps can smell the stuff."
"If I had recognised the man when I saw him dead, we could have had an officer posted to keep an eye on the flat!"