“Who knows?” repeated Furneaux sadly. “Good-day, gentlemen. Some of this merry party will meet again, of course, if not here, at the Assizes. Don’t forget my bill. Mr. Tomlin. By the way, one egg at breakfast had seen vicissitudes. It shouldn’t be rated too highly.”
“I’m traveling by your train,” cried Ingerman.
“So I understood,” said Furneaux over his shoulder.
There was silence for a moment after he had gone. Ingerman looked thoughtful, even puzzled. He was casting back in his mind to discover just how and when the detective “understood” that his departure was imminent, since he himself had only arrived at a decision after leaving the chemist’s.
“That chap is no good,” announced Elkin. “I’ll back old Robinson against him any day.”
“Sh-s-sh! He may ’ear you,” muttered the landlord.
“Don’t care if he does. Cornhill! What the blazes has Cornhill to do with the murder at The Hollies?”
Ingerman appreciated the value of that concluding phrase. Elkin had used it once before in Siddle’s shop, and was quietly reproved by the chemist for his outspokenness.
Ingerman, however, did not inform the company that his office lay in an alley off Cornhill. He elected to rub in Elkin’s words.
“Mr. Siddle seemed to object to The Hollies being mentioned as the scene of the crime,” he said. “I wonder why?”