He weighed that remark as if it might cover a snare, before he scored a triumph of allusiveness by replying, “Fellow called Carter. He’s got a blue nose.”
Despite my exasperation I tried once more on a note of forced geniality, “What sort of man is this chauffeur of the Jervaises? Do you know him at all?”
“Wears brown leather gaiters,” Hughes answered after another solemn deliberation.
I could have kicked him with all the pleasure in life. His awful guardedness made me feel as if I were an inquisitive little journalist trying to ferret out some unsavoury scandal. And he had been the first person to point the general suspicion a few minutes earlier, by his inquiry about the motor. I decided to turn the tables on him, if I could manage it.
“I asked because you seemed to suggest just now that he had gone off with the Jervaises’ motor,” I remarked.
Hughes stroked his long thin nose with his thumb and forefinger. It seemed to take him about a minute from bridge to nostril. Then he inhaled a long draught of smoke from his cigarette, closed one eye as if it hurt him, and threw back his head to blow out the smoke again with a slow gasp of relief.
“One never knows,” was all the explanation he vouchsafed after this tedious performance.
“Whether a chauffeur will steal his master’s motor?” I asked.
“Incidentally,” he said.
“But, good heavens, if he’s that sort of man…” I suggested.