“Not worth while, my boy. Ingerman is the crafty one. I thought I might be doing you more harm than good, or I would have given him a thick ear this afternoon ... Oh, by the way, what time is it?”
“Seven o’clock.”
“A little fellow named Furneaux is coming here to dinner at seven-thirty. Said he would drop in by the back door, and mutter ‘Hush! I’m Hawkshaw, the detective.’ He resembles a cock-sparrow, so I asked him why he didn’t fly in through an attic window. He took my point at once, and remarked that he wanted none of my lip, or he would ask me officially what became of Don Ramon de Santander’s big pink pearl. It’s a queer yarn. There was a bust-up in Guatemala—”
“Look here, Wally,” broke in Grant anxiously. “Are you serious? Did Furneaux really say he was coming here?”
“He did, and more—he expressed a partiality for a chicken roasted on a spit. You have a spit in your kitchen, he says, and a pair of chickens in your larder.”
“How did you contrive to meet him?”
“You’re a poor guesser, Jack. He met me. ‘That you, Mr. Hart?’ he said. ‘Mr. Grant’s house is the first on the right across the bridge. Tell him’—and the rest of it.”
“Have you warned Mrs. Bates?”
“Mrs. Bates being?”
“My housekeeper.”