Rather moodily he retraced his steps to where the Inspector was directing the operations by the bank of the lakelet; but by the time he reached the group his face had taken on its normal expression.
“Fishing still poor?” he demanded, as he came up.
“Nothing so far, sir,” the Inspector confessed. “These rocks are the very deuce to work amongst. I’ve been running the grapnel over the same track two or three times, just in case we miss the thing the first shot. We’ve had no luck at all—unless you count this as a valuable find: a bit of limestone or something like that.”
He kicked a shapeless mass of white stone as he spoke. Sir Clinton stooped over it: a dripping mass about the size of a man’s fist. The Inspector watched him as he examined it; but Sir Clinton’s face suggested neither interest nor satisfaction.
“Might be a bit of marble that got swept over the top when they were putting up the balustrade in the old days,” the Inspector hazarded.
Sir Clinton looked at it again and shook his head.
“I doubt it,” he said. “However, since it’s the only thing you’ve fished up, you’d better keep it, Inspector. One never knows what may be useful. I might make a paper-weight out of it as a souvenir.”
The Inspector failed to see the point of the joke, but he laughed as politely as he could.
“Very well, Sir Clinton, I’ll see that it’s put aside.”
He glanced over the Chief Constable’s shoulder.