Hemingway grinned, but he said: "Did you tell him to keep on at it?"
"I did, the duine bochd, but it went to my heart! If he had had it, would Seaton-Carew not have kept the stuff in the hidden safe?"
"I don't know. You'd think so, but old Darliston's just been warning me he was a damned slippery customer. It would be a smart trick to install a secret safe, just to put chaps like Cathercott off the scent. Did you say there were two or three hundred pounds in it? I suppose Cathercott was so busy sniffing for drugs he never noticed a nasty smell of rat. I would have. What did the fellow want with all that amount of money in the flat? Planning a midnight flit, in case we got after him?"
"Well," said the Inspector mildly, "it is not an offence to keep money by you!"
"No, and if he ran a big estate, no doubt he would have a lot of cash in his safe from time to time, so as he could pay wages, and such-like. If you can tell me what he should want with a great wad of bank-notes in a small flat in town, you'll be clever! Did you check up on what the Birtley girl said about Mrs. Haddington having kicked up a row because of some towel or other in that cloakroom?"
"I was not able. The girl she would have spoken to, if she spoke at all, is the head housemaid, and she has been ill with the influenza since two days. You would not have me push my way into the lassie's bedroom!"
"Quite right! You can't be too careful," agreed his incorrigible superior. "Nice thing it would be if we had members of the Department getting compromised!"
"I am susceptible to the influenza," said Inspector Grant austerely. "Not but what I would have taken the risk, if I had thought it proper."
"All right, all right!" said Hemingway soothingly. "It'll have to be checked up on, but I'm bound to say it wouldn't have been at all proper. One subject throwing a handful of mud at another isn't anything to get excited about. Not but what there's quite a lot about Mrs. Haddington I could bear to have explained to me. If I could believe that a dame who looks to me to have about as much passion in her as a cod-fish would murder the boy-friend because he got off with her daughter, I think I'd pinch her."
Inspector Grant was well-acquainted with his chief, but this made him gasp. "There is no evidence! Thoir ort, you are joking!"