"Come back, or I shall have you brought back!"
Winter was in a white rage, but Furneaux pressed on daringly, whistling a tune, and never looking round. Clarke, momentarily expecting the roof of Scotland Yard to fall in, gazed from Furneaux to Winter and from Winter to Furneaux until the diminutive Jersey man had vanished round an angle of a long passage.
But nothing happened. Winter was beaten to his knees, and he knew it.
CHAPTER XV
CLEARING THE AIR
Winter was far too strong a man to remain long buried in the pit of humiliation into which Furneaux, aided unwittingly by Clarke, had cast him. The sounds of Furneaux's jaunty footsteps had barely died away before he shoved aside the papers on which he had been engaged previously, and reached across the table for a box of cigars.
He took one, and shoved the box towards Clarke, whose face was still glistening in evidence of his rush from Marlborough Street police-station.
"Here, you crack-pate!" he said, "smoke; it may clear your silly head."
"But I can't repeat too often that Janoc has confessed—confessed!" and Clarke's voice rose almost to a squeal on that final word.