Within a quarter of an hour the irate general was being ushered into Sir Leward Marradine’s room at Scotland Yard. The Assistant-Commissioner rose to greet him.
“Very good of you to come, Sir Hunter,” he said suavely. “We haven’t met since . . .”
“What does all this mean, eh?” broke in Sir Hunter, ignoring the other’s extended hand. “Pretty thing when a man in my position—or any respectable citizen for that matter—can be hauled out of his office to a police station without rhyme or reason. What’s it mean, eh?”
“It was hardly that, Sir Hunter,” replied Marradine, keeping his temper with some difficulty. “Won’t you take that chair? As I told you in my note, we are in need of some information that you can give us—information respecting a serious crime. I thought that it would be much less disagreeable for you to come here than to have an interrogation carried out in your own office.”
Sir Hunter reluctantly took the proffered seat.
“Serious crime, eh? What am I supposed to know about it? Am I supposed to have committed it? Have you got someone waiting behind a screen to take down what I say, or a dictaphone, or some such infernal contraption? What?”
Sir Hunter knew perfectly well that none of this was the case and that he was behaving rather childishly, but he was irritated by an entirely extraneous consideration. He was, in sober truth, jealous of the position of power occupied by Marradine, a man considerably junior to him in the Army, a man, furthermore, who had only served for about five minutes in France and that only in a soft “Q” job. Lorne had never actually met him but he had heard of him, and he had heard nothing to his advantage—a precocious young pup (in his “young officer” days), a pusher, a bloody red-tab, and finally, a damned embusqué. Sir Hunter would not in the least have objected to being interrogated by a proper detective—he merely objected to Marradine.
Sir Leward wisely ignored his visitor’s petulance.
“It is in connection with the death of Sir Garth Fratten that I want your help,” he said. Lorne pricked up his ears. “I understand that Sir Garth was about to join your Board—that is the case, isn’t it?”
Sir Hunter was all attention now.