"Well, you say he has his talkee-talkee with the flying-fellow, doesn't give you a single word of explanation, but simply carries him off into the country. It looks as if he thought he'd already told you too much and was pulling out again. I don't think he intends to say anything more. You take a short holiday, go down there, and see if I'm right."
(How far he was right you already know. As I have told you in anticipation, I did go down, waited for a couple of days, then tackled Esdaile about it, and found he had taken the very line Glenfield indicated.)
"So it's really publicity you're all scared of?" he continued presently. "Well, I told you I had a bit of a pull here and there. Publicity's rather my line of country, you know."
"Yes, but hardly against the law of the land," I objected. "You can't go about suborning judges and telling the police their business—even you."
"Good gracious, man!" he cried energetically, staring incredulously at me. "Don't tell me I've been employing an editor who doesn't know any more than that!"
"Than what?"
"Than clumsy work of that sort! Suborn judges! Meddle with the police! I've been entrusting the Circus to a man who talks like that!... Hurry up that waiter!"
"But isn't that what it comes to?"
"You haven't got to let it come to that—not within a hundred miles of it! You shock me! Tell me now what you do when you find yourself all balled up and unable to meet a Case?"
"That's precisely what I want to know."