“I am informed,” he went on, speaking with a deliberateness meant to be impressive, “that you did entertain another lady as a visitor last night.”
Grant allowed his glance to dwell on Robinson for an instant. Hitherto he had ignored the man. Now he surveyed him as if he were a viper.
“It will be a peculiarly offensive thing if the personality of a helpless and unoffending girl is brought into this inquiry,” he cried. “‘Brought in’ is too mild—I ought to say ‘dragged in.’ As it happens, astronomy is one of my hobbies. Last evening, as the outcome of a chat on the subject, Doris Martin, daughter of the local postmaster, came here to view Sirius through an astronomical telescope. There is the instrument,” and he pointed through P. C. Robinson to a telescope on a tripod in a corner of the room. The gesture was eloquent. The burly policeman might have been a sheet of glass. “As you see, it is a solid article, not easily lifted about. It weighs nearly a hundred-weight.”
“Why is it so heavy?”
The superintendent had a knack of putting seemingly irrelevant questions. Robinson had been disconcerted by it earlier in the day, but Grant seemed to treat the interruption as a sensible one.
“For observation purposes an astronomical telescope is not of much use unless the movement of the earth is counteracted,” he said. “Usually, the dome of an observatory swings on a specially contrived axis, but that is a very expensive structure, so my telescope is governed by a clockwork attachment and moves on its own axis.”
Mr. Fowler nodded. He was really a very well informed man for a country police-officer; he understood clearly.
“Miss Martin came here about a quarter to ten,” continued Grant, “and left within three-quarters of an hour. She did not enter the house. She was watching Sirius while I explained the methods whereby the distance of any star from the earth is computed and its chemical analysis determined—”
“Most instructive, I’m sure,” put in the superintendent.
He smiled genially, so genially that Grant dismissed the notion that the other might, in vulgar parlance, be pulling his leg.