“Well, I can’t understand what you’re driving at, Clinton. On the face of things, it seems to me that you’ve gambled away that poor girl’s life merely to get a case that you can prove; and now you’re no nearer it than you were before.”
Sir Clinton’s face grew very grave.
“You’ve touched a sore spot there, Squire. But did it never occur to you that I didn’t expect an attack on Miss Hawkhurst? What I did expect was something quite different. Didn’t it strike you as peculiar that I angled for that invitation to play bridge when it obviously wasn’t the sort of thing that one expects? I had to put on a pretty tough hide to wangle that with a straight face.”
“Yes,” Wendover confirmed, “it was a piece of rank bad taste and I was surprised at your doing it.”
“It was. And I’m not usually celebrated for that kind of thing. Don’t you see what I was driving at, Squire? I expected the next attack to be made on myself—and I took good care to make an opportunity for it by going on to the murderer’s own ground. The whole bridge-party affair was a plant of mine to make myself a good target for the air-gun expert.”
“My godfathers!” Wendover ejaculated in surprise, “I never thought that was what you were after. You’ve got fair nerves, Clinton, to offer yourself up like that to be shot at.”
“I’d rather take it when I was ready for it than have it unexpectedly—hence the bridge-party. I felt he’d hardly be able to resist the chance of a sitting shot.”
“H’m! I don’t know that I’d have been able to screw myself up to that point.”
“Of course you would! You didn’t hesitate over the risk of going after that fellow, through the window.”
“Yes,” Wendover admitted, “but that was in hot blood, which is rather different.”