“Oh, yes!” Storm parried desperately. “I recall it now, but I didn’t see you, old chap. I was on my way to my tobacconist’s. By the way, that was a wonderful brand of cigarettes you used to get from Turkey before the war. I’ve been trying to remember the name——”
The colonel’s laugh boomed out in good humored derision.
“Much good it would do you now! They aren’t made any more; in fact I doubt if that grade of tobacco is grown over there since the world turned upside down! I’ve found something new, however; try one of these.”
He passed around a cigarette case and the hoped-for diversion was created, but Storm’s heart felt like lead within him and he dared not meet George’s eyes. He tried to think collectedly, but the very weight of his own guilt prevented him from viewing the case sanely from an unbiassed attitude. Here, within the hour, the last links in the chain of circumstantial evidence had been forged against him in George’s eyes had the latter but the sense to grasp the full significance of what he had learned. The reported loss of his capital, his presence at the terminal at the time of Horton’s supposed arrival, George’s own theory that Horton had been a victim of someone he knew and trusted, the proximity of the place where the body was found to Storm’s rooms, the testimony of the policeman as to the two pedestrians, the coincidence of the newspapers in Horton’s bag supplying the missing parts of those in Storm’s possession; why, the thing was patent on the face of it!
Only George’s ignorance concerning the newspapers, his blind faith in his friend and the improbability of his grasping so monstrous a solution stood between Storm and certain exposure. But was it an improbability? Was George even now putting the facts together and waiting to strike?
Storm sat back in silence, puffing his cigarette and leaving the burden of conversation to the others. He heard the Colonel’s deep bass, Griffiths’ keen, incisive tones and George’s measured, phlegmatic voice with no change in its unemotional timbre, but they came to him as from a distance. Did George know? The thought held him as in a vice and he longed for yet dreaded the moment when they should be alone together, which he felt must reveal the truth.
At length George rose somewhat heavily and turned to his friend.
“Shall we be getting on, Norman? Unless you would prefer to dine here, of course——”
“No.” Storm, too, got out of his chair. “We’ve a lot of things to settle about our trip.”
They took leave of their friends and left the club, and still George’s manner remained, to the other man’s over-analytical state of mind, significantly grave and reticent. He could endure the suspense no longer, and a spirit of bravado entered into him.