"Ch't! Not so loud, or I shall wish I had made you a dumb man as well as a deaf one. Sh-h! Nothing now—your time is coming. We have dawdled to the end of the dawdling period, and come to the active one. You shall have speech and excitement enough the minute the darkness falls."
"You have an idea, then?" murmured Mr. Narkom. "You have really picked up a clue?"
"I have picked up many. They may be good and they may be bad, I can decide only when St. Saviour's bells start ringing to-night."
"You have a clue to that, then?"
"Not I. They will be the last on my list for investigation. At present I am principally concerned with the astonishing circumstance regarding the noise of that fellow Davis's death struggle."
"But, man alive, he didn't make any."
"Precisely. That's the astonishing circumstance to which I allude!" said Cleek. The queer one-sided smile travelled slowly up his cheek.
Midway down the neglected garden Mrs. Costivan was engaged in the task of hanging up a pair of wet gray overalls, and along the path beside her a stream of yellowish water from a recently emptied washtub was trickling down the drain.
"Mr. Narkom!"
"Yes."