"Our friend Cunningham will have a pretty job on his hands explaining away all the facts I have gathered against him to-day," he exulted. "He's no more a lawyer than I am, Mr. Davies!"
"Not a lawyer!" I repeated.
"No. He's not registered, and he cannot practise law in New York City! I'm going to look up one or two more details before we call upon him. Be at the house at quarter to eight, please, providing, of course, that you desire to accompany me."
"McKelvie, if you dare to go to 84th Street without me, there's going to be trouble between us," I warned and he laughed gayly as he rang off.
CHAPTER XXVIII
GOLD AND BLUE
Though I was impatient to interview Cunningham, it was almost eight-thirty before we arrived at 84th Street, for on the way we had a blowout and the garage attendant was the slowest specimen of his type that I had ever had the misfortune to encounter.
Cunningham himself, debonair and genial as usual, admitted us into his apartment and invited us into what he designated as his smoking-room. It was a medium-sized room furnished in good taste, and as I sank into the depths of a luxurious arm-chair and accepted the cigar he offered me I felt assured that Cunningham could reasonably explain away the doubts which I had lately entertained toward him. Yes, the personality of the man and the soothing influence of that rare cigar had combined to make me as eager to hear him justify himself as before I had been anxious to prove him the murderer of his friend.
But McKelvie was not so easily won over. He accepted a chair and a cigar, it is true, yet I knew well that he was waiting as a person does at chess for the next move of his adversary.