"A dead man! Good—"
"He seemed to fall out of the fog, but it was actually from the window of Bullard's office, in New Broad Street. I was watching from the other side of the street when he fell. I—I was the first person to reach him. He was quite dead—awfully smashed, poor chap. There was a lamp near. One of his fists was slightly open. I noticed a glitter in it. It was this thing. I took it.—I must have a smoke."
"Better ring for something to drink."
"No. I want all my wits to make a clear story of it. Look here, Alan! The long and short of it is: Bullard committed murder to-night—"
"Oh, I say!"
Teddy ignored the interruption. "Of course I went with the crowd to the police station, and, though not as a witness, managed to get in. Bullard with an inspector turned up before long, but I kept out of his way. He had called the police himself. The man, he stated, had been trying the window of his private room while he was in another part of the premises; on entering his private room and switching on the lights, he had caught a glimpse of a face and hands falling backwards. That was all a lie. The lights had been out for some time when the man fell. The fog was horribly thick, but I can be sure of that much. And then—this!" he dangled the nugget.
Alan broke the silence. "It looks bad, certainly, but still, you know, Bullard might not—and quite naturally, too—have liked to admit that after a struggle he pushed the man from the window—if that's what you mean."
"No, that's not what I mean. About twenty minutes earlier, I saw the man enter Bullard's office by the usual way—"
"Ah!"
"And note this, Alan! At the police station, I saw his fingers go to the nugget—he has a habit of playing with the thing when he is talking—and when he realised that it wasn't there, I thought he was going to faint. He soon pulled himself together, but—"