“I know the gal they quarrelled over,” Jonathan Crossty chimed in suddenly.
“Who quarrelled over?” demanded the youth, wheeling round. “Oh, you mean—”
“I mean I won’t have any names in this snug,” Tim interrupted angrily. “Don’t I keep saying it? What a lot of cross-grained, gossiping old hags it is. X’s and Z’s are all right, but not names.”
“But that came out in evidence—that they’d quarrelled,” the reporter said.
“The girl’s name didn’t, and it might be anybody.”
“But I know who it is,” Jonathan persisted.
I finished my drink and nodding a good night all round took myself off, but not very far because I waited in the shadows until old Jonathan Crossty came hobbling out. I met him in the doorway.
“Hallo!” I cried. “Not home yet, Mr. Crossty?”
I swung round and we went down the road together. He lived in a little cottage nearly opposite Stone Hollow, and it was thus quite natural that we should be going the same way.
“And so you know the lady they quarrelled over,” I remarked, after a few preliminary observations.