"Please allow me to do this. Don't you see?—if I tell Jenkins, in your presence, to pack and forward them, it will stifle a good deal of the gossip which must be going on even in my own household."
"Well—from that point of view, Mr. Osborne——"
"Ah, I cannot express my gratitude, but, when all this wretched business is ended, we must meet under happier conditions."
He touched a bell, and Jenkins appeared.
"Send a box of cigars to Chief Inspector Winter, at Scotland Yard, by special messenger," said Rupert, with as careless an air as he could assume.
Jenkins gurgled something that sounded like "Yes, sir," and went out hastily. Rupert spread his hands with a gesture of utmost weariness.
"You are right about the man in the street," he sighed. "Even my own valet feared that you had come to arrest me."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Winter.
But when Jenkins, discreetly cheerful, murmured "Good-day, sir," and the outer door was closed behind him, Winter's strong face wore its prizefighter aspect.
"Clarke would have arrested him," he said to himself. "But that man did not kill Mirabel Armaud. Then who did kill her? I don't know, yet I believe that Furneaux guesses. Who did it? Damme, it beats me, and the greatest puzzle of all is to read the riddle of Furneaux."