"Well!" Sloane said at last, in a whiney tone. "What do you want?"
"First," Hastings apologized, "I want to say how sorry I am I didn't make myself clearly understood night before last when I told Miss Sloane I'd act as mouthpiece for this household. I didn't mean I could invent a statement for each of you, or for any of you. What I did mean amounts to this: if you, for instance, would tell me what you know—all you know—about this murder, I could relay it to the reporters—and to the sheriff, who's been annoying you so this evening. As——"
"Flat-headed fiends!" Sloane cut in, writhing under the light coverlet. "Another harangue!"
Hastings kept his temper.
"No harangue about it. But it's to come to this, Mr. Sloane: you're handicapping me, and the reporters and the sheriff don't trust you."
"Why? Why don't they trust me?" shrilled Sloane, writhing again.
"Ill tell you in a very few words: because you refused to testify at the inquest yesterday, giving illness as an excuse. That's one reason. The——"
"Howling helions! Wasn't I ill? Didn't I have enough to make me ill?—Jarvis, a little whiskey!"
"Dr. Garnet hasn't told them so—the reporters. He won't tell them so. In fact," Hastings said, with less show of cordiality, "from all he said to me, I gather he doesn't think you an ill man—that is, dangerously ill."
"And because of that, they say what, these reporters, this sheriff? What?"