“No, but I’m his intimate friend. What made you take me for him?”
“Beg pardon, sir, I’m sure. I don’t know the gentleman, but I saw the name on the cigarette case he dropped outside Mr. ‘Catch-’old-o’-you’s’ door this morning. I always call the old gentleman that—nearest I can get to his name—and he don’t mind a bit, not he! Julia’s got the case all right—she’s Mr. ‘Catch-’old-o’-you’s’ house-keeper; Italian same as him, and a good old sort. I thought perhaps you were Mr. Carling come after it.”
Austin saw and interpreted aright a slight and significant crook of the little man’s fingers and produced a coin.
“So you found the case?” he remarked pleasantly. “Mr. Carling will be glad to know it. I guess he hadn’t a notion where he dropped it. He’s left town to-day—on his honeymoon.”
“Thank you, sir, though I’m sure I didn’t expect anything,” responded the little man, promptly pocketing the tip. “Gone on his honeymoon, has he? Why, he’s never the gentleman that was married at St. Paul’s to-day—the wedding that poor lady was on her way to when she was murdered? They didn’t give his name in the paper, I saw. Terrible thing, isn’t it, sir? And will you believe me, I never heard a word about it till nigh on teatime! It must have ’appened just after I went to my dinner: I was a bit late to-day; had to take a parcel up to No. 20—that’s when I found the cigarette case; and if only I’d been about I might ’ave seen it all. And to think of young Charlie Sadler doing such an awful thing. He must ’ave gone clean off his nut!”
“You know him?” asked Starr quickly, thankful that the garrulous little man had strayed from the subject of Roger Carling’s presence so near the scene of the tragedy, though at the moment he was unable to analyse his thought sufficiently to know why he should feel thankful.
“Know Charlie Sadler? Why, I’ve known him ever since he was a little nipper so high. Lives with his mother—a decent old soul—down in Milsom Cottages, and he’s courting little Jessie Jackson over at the post office, on the sly, for her aunt, Mrs. Cave, don’t think him good enough for her; and it seems she’s right after all. But whoever would ’ave thought of ’im going and doing a murder like that?”
“We don’t know yet that he did it,” said Starr.
“Well, of course it’ll ’ave to be proved against him; but if he didn’t, then who did? That’s the question. And he was there right enough. Slipped in by the side door to see Jessie while her aunt was safe in the shop, and when the girl was called down he must ’ave seen the lady and been taken with one of these ’ere sudden temptations; and then when he found what he’d done he ’ooked it, and smashed up the cab and himself in his ’urry. There it is in a nutshell, sir!” Withers concluded triumphantly. Evidently he had been gossiping pretty freely during the evening, but as evidently he as yet knew nothing of Lady Rawson’s visit to Cacciola’s flat—if, indeed, she had been there—and attached no significance to Roger Carling’s visit. How should he?
“Perhaps you’re right,” Starr conceded. “We’ll all have just to ‘wait and see’ anyhow. Well, I’ll go up——”