"'What do you mean?' I said. He was smiling now, but I felt a bit uneasy. We did stuff him up a bit that night, you know. He's a dark horse, that fellow.
"'It doesn't do, Mr. Rooke,' he said. 'Different men take different views of their duty, and you'll be striking one of the other sort one of these days!'
"'I don't know what you mean,' I said. 'Oh yes you do,' says he. 'I'm dashed if I do,' says I. 'Then you're lucky not to be dashed a good deal worse,' says he; 'you take my advice, Mr. Rooke, and stop adopting things, babies or what not. You might burn your fingers. You might—ahem!—blow 'em off'....
"And he nodded and marched off.
"Now what the devil do you think's his game?"
I know of no more exciting mental pleasure than that of finding your a priori guesses taking shape and substance in the realm of actual things. I suppose it is the triumphant cry of your deeper self telling the other self "I told you so!" Remember how little I knew of Inspector Webster, yet with what instinctive reserve I had hedged my impression of him. "A dark horse?" Yes, of quite the darkest kind. I recapitulated the degrees of his darkness. He had come round to Lennox Street that night, probably fresh from his talk with this fellow Westbury; he had put a whole series of questions, but of implications so guarded that in writing that portion of the story I had to itemize and underline what I surmised to be their real purport; and he had instituted a search of Esdaile's premises—twelve hours later! Why twelve hours later? Why not on the spot, there and then? Why give Philip this law, that as a matter of fact he had made use of to drop that pistol into the river?
Could it be that he knew his House and Estate Agent better than we did—knew his vanity, dullness, and the risks of basing a charge on his unsupported word? No doubt he had questioned Westbury in terms far more explicit than those he had used to us. Unless Westbury had actually put his hand inside Rooke's pocket, probably all he could swear to was that the pocket contained something heavy. Not until late in the same afternoon had the bullet been found. Suppose Webster had said to Westbury, "Not so quickly, my friend; you said nothing about a pistol at the time; it only became a pistol when the bullet was found; we can't go putting the cart before the horse like that; evidence is evidence; you can't let half a day pass and then remember things to fit the Case; you may feel sure of a thing, but could you make a jury sure?" Suppose he had said something like this? The police too are bound by the probabilities of conviction. It is no credit to them to fail on a charge.
And a man who can say, "Was it indeed, sir?" when informed of the identity of a distinguished King's Counsel who has expressly announced himself only a few hours before is emphatically not the man to think that he can make a jacket for a large gooseberry by skinning a small-sized flint.