“Yes.”
“A little while before she had expressed, by certain mannerisms, an odd sort of interest in that particular point of the compass?”
“That was plain enough,” stated Bat. “Anybody who was there could see it.”
“It looks,” and again the vacant blue glasses fixed themselves upon Mr. Scanlon, “it looks quite a bit like something pre-arranged. A signal, perhaps.”
But Scanlon shook his head.
“No,” said he. “The hill is too far away. And another thing: moonlight, no matter how bright, is uncertain. You can’t be dead sure of getting an eye full of anything.”
Ashton-Kirk nodded; the blue glasses looked rounder and more vacant than before. But there was a deep wrinkle at the top of the nose between them which told Scanlon that the detective had marked the incident well.
“It means something,” the big man told himself. “And he’ll hit on it before he’s through. But what it means and how he’s going to work on it is too much for me.”
After a little Ashton-Kirk arose.
“Stay here,” said he. “I’ll not be more than a few minutes.”