He may have been, although the fact did not appear in his conversation; for I discovered almost immediately that he was, either by nature or by reason of his legal training, cursed with a procrastinating gift of diplomacy.
“Awkward affair!” I began as soon as we had got our whiskies and lighted cigarettes.
Hughes drank with a careful slowness, put his glass down with superfluous accuracy, and then after another instant of tremendous deliberation, said, “What is?”
“Well, this,” I returned gravely.
“Meaning?” he asked judicially.
“Of course it may be too soon to draw an inference,” I said.
“Especially with no facts to draw them from,” he added.
“All the same,” I went on boldly, “it looks horribly suspicious.”
“What does?”
I began to lose patience with him. “I’m not suggesting that the Sturtons’ man from the Royal Oak has been murdered,” I said.