“Thoyne,” I responded, looking him straight in the face. “Did you ever hear the name of Calcott?”
He sent me a quick glance that was partly, I think, surprise but was not entirely devoid of wrath. The name had evidently no very pleasant sound in his ears.
“You see,” I went on, interpreting his half-instinctive movement in my own way, “you have given me a lot of quite unnecessary trouble. Had you been frank with me—”
“I was frank on everything that mattered,” he said sullenly.
“You thought the fact that Clevedon had been an American crook known as Calcott whom you had met in Chicago—”
“That’s a lie, anyway.”
“You needn’t get excited about it,” I rejoined equably.
“Excited, the devil!” he cried. “I am not excited. I’m as calm as you are.”
“Then perhaps you would like to tell me the whole story.”
“What story?”