“Indeed?”
Sir Clinton’s face showed that at last he saw something more clearly than before.
“That was the motive,” Foss continued. “Now the whole thing put me in a most awkward position.”
“I think I see your difficulty,” Sir Clinton assured him, with more geniality than he had hitherto shown.
“It was very hard to make up my mind what to do,” Foss went on. “I’m a guest here. This was a family joke, apparently—one brother taking a rise out of another. It was hardly for me to step in and perhaps cause bad feelings between them. I thought the whole thing was perhaps just talk—not meant seriously in the end. A kind of ‘how-would-we-do-it-if-we-set-about-it’ discussion, you understand.”
Sir Clinton nodded understandingly.
“Difficult to know what to do, in your shoes, undoubtedly.”
Foss was obviously relieved by the Chief Constable’s comprehension.
“I thought it over,” he continued, with a less defensive tone in his voice, “and it seemed to me that the soundest course was to let sleeping dogs lie—to let them lie, at any rate, until they woke up and bit somebody. I made up my mind I’d say nothing about the matter at all, unless something really did happen.”
“Very judicious,” Sir Clinton acquiesced.