"Ah! If!" said Westbury, with the greatest intensity of meaning.
There was a palm in a copper pot behind him, and above his head a picture of a huntsman holding up a fox over the baying pack preparatory to drinking Somebody's Whisky. My eyes wandered reflectively to these objects for a moment; then I took a further step. It seemed to me too late to draw back now.
"But—well, since we are discussing this I wish you could be a little plainer," I said. "You say all Chelsea's interested in this Case, and I don't live in Chelsea. Why is Chelsea so interested?"
He replied promptly enough. "Because, sir, of certain things that don't appear on the surface of which I happen to have some knowledge."
"May I ask what things?"
He echoed me.
"And may I ask you something, and that is whether you happen to be aware that the police searched certain premises the other morning?"
"Do you mean the morning of the accident?"
"I do not mean the morning of the accident. I'm speaking of last Friday morning, at six o'clock, before anybody was about."