Now Hellier had committed no great fault; he had even supplied information that might have brought the whole case to a satisfactory termination. But Freyberger was not in a frame of mind to do justice to the barrister.
He was jealous, and that is the fact of the matter, as jealous of the Gyde affair as any old man has ever been of his young wife.
CHAPTER XXXIII
HELLIER returned, slowly and sadly, to the High Street.
Assured in his own mind that Klein inhabited the house in St Ann’s Road, hopeless of any help from Freyberger, whom he had put down as a self-conceited man of not very luminous intelligence, he had undertaken the desperate venture of going himself to the house, tackling the occupant if he were at home, and if he were absent exploring the place.
He had provided himself with a powerful chisel to prise the verandah door open. He had not to use it, however, for, as we have seen, the door was only held by the catch.
It had been an expedition requiring a very great deal of pluck, considering the appalling man with whom he would have had to contend had his suspicions been correct. And it had ended in such a miserable fiasco!
When he had lain on the floor of the passage with Freyberger on top of him, he imagined that his last moment had come. He had not even cried out for help, knowing that before help could arrive he would be dead.
He had not come badly out of the business, yet he felt depressed with a miserable sense of failure.