V
Let me see, how many does that make—I mean when, half an hour later, I had given him as much as I then knew of the outline of this story? How many people were parties in greater or less degree to the highly important public matter that we were struggling to keep from the light of day?
There were the five men at our breakfast-party: Esdaile, Rooke, Mackwith, Hubbard and myself. And the three women: Mrs. Esdaile, Mrs. Cunningham and Joan. Westbury, and an unknown number of his associates; and Inspector Webster, also an unknown quantity. And of course there was Charles Valentine Smith himself. I am not including Hanson and old William Dadley the picture-frame maker. Call it certainly eleven. Lord Glenfield made the twelfth. We were getting on.
He took my narrative quite lightly. Indeed, parts of it seemed almost to amuse him. He asked if he might have a second liqueur, and then sat back in the padded alcove smiling at his glass.
"Well," he said at last, "it would make quite a neat prize competition, wouldn't it?" Tremendous force as he is, he can never quite shake off his interest in prize competitions.
I asked him in what way.
"I mean the position of your painter-friend. As you've told the story it strikes me that he's the key of the whole situation. And I should say that he intended to remain so."
"What makes you say that?"