“Where the devil did you take yourself off to?” he demanded. “If the inspector let you in on this with me ’twas not to gum up my game, Denny Riordan! Moreover, whenever you go off on your own hook—!”
“Let be, Mac! The inspector’s here, talking to Orbit now in his private sitting-room, they all but caught me snooping around in there!” Dennis interrupted. “He’s sprung it on him that Hughes was poisoned!”
“Come on downstairs and tell me what you heard.” McCarty led the way without further waste of words and Dennis followed him to the entrance hall below where they stationed themselves in the embrasure of a window beside the door.
“Whilst you were asking Jean about the layout of the rooms upstairs I thought I’d have a look at the ones Orbit keeps for himself,” Dennis explained in a slightly defiant tone. “He sleeps in a bed with a roof to it, all hung with curtains like a hearse. The chair that was burned is gone but there’s a scorched place in the rug and the smell is hanging on the air yet. I took just a peep in the bathroom, which is fitted up like a gymnasium and almost as big, and then I went on into the sitting-room. ’Tis grand, Mac, with books and pictures and flowers everywhere, to say nothing of the window boxes just ablaze with flowers for all it’s near frost. There’s a piano, too, with big sheets of paper covered with hen-tracks on the rack as if somebody’d been writing music by hand, and I was just looking at it when I heard the inspector’s voice and him and Orbit coming along the hall. I ducked back into the bedroom and then I stopped for I caught the last word the inspector was saying; it was ‘murder!’”
It was an unprecedentedly long speech for the taciturn Dennis and as he paused for breath McCarty rubbed his chin reflectively.
“How did Orbit take it?”
“For a full minute you could have cut the stillness with a knife and then he says low and shocked, like: ‘My God, how frightful! You’re sure there’s no possibility of a mistake about it, inspector? But your man who witnessed it said nothing last night about foul play! I understand that poor Hughes simply dropped in the street when no one was near.’ Then the inspector up and told him it was poison, giving it that long name ‘physos’-something, and Orbit says could it be possible, that he’d heard of it, of course, being a bit of a bot—botanist, but ’twas rare, and how could anybody have got hold of it to give to Hughes, and why?” Dennis paused again and then added conscientiously: “Maybe them wasn’t just the words, Mac, but he was struck all of a heap. I was afraid they’d be coming in and catching me so I beat it out to the head of the stairs where you found me.—Wisht! They’re coming down now!”
“I’ll be waiting for a word with the inspector,” McCarty announced hurriedly. “I’ve a job for you, Denny if you’ll not be shooting your mouth off!”
A door above had opened but it was evident that Orbit and his companion had paused, for no sound of footsteps ensued and Dennis asked eagerly:
“What is it, Mac? Well you know I’m not given to talk—!”