“D’you mind if I smoke?” he demanded, perfunctorily. “It soothes one, I always think; gives you a better chance of putting things calmly and not getting mixed up in your story.”
He peered thoughtfully into his case for a second or two before he could make up his mind which cigarette to take; but at last he found one to his mind and set it alight. Wendover fidgeted slightly, but Sir Clinton evidently recognised the uselessness of trying to hasten Ernest in his operations.
“There’s been a burglary here last night,” he announced at last. “Or rather, when I say last night, I really mean this morning because it was a good deal after midnight when it happened.”
“Can you give me the exact time?” Sir Clinton asked.
Ernest looked at him owlishly, reflected for a moment or two, and then shook his head in a care-worn fashion.
“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t look at the clock, you know. It was after midnight, that’s all I can remember.”
“Begin at the beginning, then, Mr. Shandon, and give us all the details you can. Anything may turn out to be useful for all we can tell.”
“I usually go to bed quite early,” Ernest began, “but last night, after you went away, I thought I would have another look over Roger’s papers. You interrupted me, you remember,” he said, as though in explanation of his activity. “I got quite interested in some of them. Roger had so many irons in the fire. I hadn’t realised before what an amount of energy he must have had. You’ve no idea of the amount of things he was mixed up in.”
“Yes?” said Sir Clinton, trying to hasten the slow progress of the narrative.
“Such an amount of things,” Ernest went on. “It took me all my time to make head or tail of the papers I looked at. I must have been hours and hours, turning them over and reading bits here and there—files of correspondence and that sort of thing. His cheque-book stubs were there, too, and I looked at them. I’d no idea so much cash passed through his hands, no idea at all. By the way, I noticed something funny about his last cheque-book. I’ll tell you about that again, though. It was rum, I thought; but I’d better be getting on with the story.”