"I can answer for Mrs. Grey."
Mr. Superintendent Game, whose elbow as he faced Sir Karl was leaning on a desk-table, took it off and fell to pushing together some papers, as though in abstraction. He was no doubt taking time mentally to fit in some portions of Karl's narrative with the information possessed by himself. Karl waited a minute and then went on.
"I am sure that this lady would be willing to make a solemn affidavit that she knows nothing of Salter; and that he is not, and never has been, concealed there; if by so doing it would secure her exemption from intrusion for the future."
"Yes, no doubt," said the officer somewhat absently. "Sir Karl Andinnian," he added, turning briskly to face him again after another pause, "I assume that your own part in this business was confined to the sole fact of your entering on the misapprehension of taking your agent Smith to be Salter."
"That's all. But do you not see how I feel myself to be compromised: since it was my unfortunate endeavour to set the doubt at rest, by applying to Burtenshaw, that has originated all the mischief and brought the insult on Mrs. Grey!"
"Of course. But for that step of yours we should have heard nothing of Salter in connection with Foxwood."
Karl maintained a calm exterior: but he could have ground his teeth as he listened. It was too true.
"Then, with that one exception, Sir Karl, I am right in assuming that you personally hold no other part or interest in this affair, as regards Salter?"
"As regards Salter? None whatever."
"Well now," resumed the superintendent, in a confidential kind of tone, "we can talk at our ease for a minute. Does it not strike you, Sir Karl, as an impartial and impassioned looker-on, that there is something rather curious in the affair, taking one thing with another?"