“Aye—well, we’ll say speculate, then, instead of theorise,” he remarked, drily. “You’ve indulged in speculations?”
I pointed towards the sideboard behind him.
“I’ve certainly been wondering what on earth that copper box has to do with it!” said I. “Here’s a fat, solemn, self-important old buffer travels—possibly all the way from London—to talk about a copper box in a Newcastle hotel! A Newcastle shopkeeper starts with surprise when I mention a copper box to him! And there—with the firelight glinting on it—there is the copper box!”
“Aye!” he said. “Aye, there it is—and there it’ll remain, master!” He closed his lips in a tight, firm fashion that I had already come to know very well, in spite of our brief acquaintance, and when he relaxed them again it was to smile in his sweetest fashion. “But that doesn’t explain anything, Craye, does it?” he remarked.
“Explains nothing—to me,” I assented.
He got up, threw two or three small logs of wood on the fire, and standing with his back to it, thrust his hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown. He puffed at his big pipe for a while, staring across the shadowy corners of the room, and suddenly he laughed.
“You can tell all that to Madrasia in the morning,” he said. “It’ll amuse her.”
“Mystify her, you mean!” I said.
“Well, both, then—they come to the same thing,” he answered. “Please her, too; she thought—being a woman, and having feminine intuition—that Master Pawley was—well, something of what he seems to be.”
“Then you think Pawley came here of set purpose—design?” I asked.