“We've met under rather unfortunate conditions, Mr. Hassendean,” Sir Clinton admitted soothingly, “but they're none of our choosing, you know. I quite understand your feelings; it must be a bad shock to come home to an affair like this. But I hope you'll see your way to give us any information you have—anything that will assist us to get on the track of the person who shot your nephew. We really depend on you to help us at once, for every hour lost may make it more difficult to lay our hands on the criminal. Without knowing it, you may have the key to the thing in your hands.”
More by his manner than by his words, the Chief Constable had succeeded in pacifying the old man.
“Well, if it's put like that, I don't mind,” he conceded, with a slight lessening in the asperity of his tone. “Ask your questions and I'll see what I can do for you.”
Dr. Ringwood, watching the change in the situation, reflected sardonically to himself that a title had its uses when one came to deal with a snob.
“That old bounder was rude to the Inspector on principle; but when Sir Clinton Driffield asks precisely the same question, he's quite amenable,” he thought to himself. “What a type!”
The Chief Constable, when he began his interrogatory, was careful not to betray that he already had some information.
“Perhaps we'd better begin at the beginning, Mr. Hassendean,” he suggested, with the air of one consulting a valued collaborator. “Could you throw any light on your nephew's arrangements for this evening? Did he mean to stay in the house, or had he any outside engagement that you knew about?”
“He told me he was going out to dinner with that hussy next door.”
Sir Clinton's smile further disarmed old Hassendean.
“I'm afraid you'll need to be more definite. There are so many hussies nowadays.”