“Then you can’t give me any reason why Lady Rawson should have rung you up to-day?”
“None at all, unless she gave a wrong number and it happened by chance to be ours.”
“That’s just what I think,” exclaimed George.
“It might have been so,” Snell assented. “I’ve known a good many coincidences as queer. Well, I’m very sorry to have troubled you so late, Miss Winston, and I must thank you for answering me so clearly. Some folks beat about the bush and are scared out of their senses at the very sight of a detective—when they know him as such,” he added, with a smile. “But we’re bound to get whatever information we can, even at the risk of worrying people who really haven’t anything to do with the case. And now I’ll take myself off.”
“Have a whisky-and-soda first,” urged George Winston hospitably. “Of course we know you have to look up every point, and if we’d guessed the reason why we’ve been rung up so often to-day we should have been expecting you—or someone else on the same errand.”
Snell declined the proffered refreshment, but accepted a cigarette, and lingered for a minute or two, chatting in a casual manner on the subject that was uppermost in all their minds.
George questioned him about the suspected man, Sadler, the taxicab driver.
“He’s doing all right; not as much hurt as was thought at first, and he’ll probably be able to attend the opening of the inquest to-morrow. But we haven’t been able to interrogate him yet; in fact he doesn’t know he’s under arrest.”
“Do you believe he did it?” demanded George.