"Indeed I do not."
"What, you're as warm as all that and can't guess the rest!"
I frowned, a little annoyed. It is a little annoying to be told that something is under your nose that you don't see.
"As for that bullet-hole in the roof——" I hazarded.
"Bullet-hole in the roof? There never was a bullet-hole in the roof. The branch did that. Westbury had the bullet all right. By the way, I saw him last Sunday morning. Going great guns. He'll end up as our first Bolshevist Premier. Quite the biggest crowd in the Park."
Here Monty chuckled. It was he who had first discovered the final effect of the Case on the House and Estate Agent. He had come upon him one Sunday morning in the space just within the Marble Arch, standing on a box and holding forth passionately on social inequalities and equal opportunities for all. I am afraid he had never got over the unconscious trouncing Billy Mackwith had administered on that coroner's jury, and the collapse of his righteous cause, ending in Inspector Webster's refusal to have him hanging about the Police Station any longer, had completely upset his mental balance. He declaims from his box until the opening-time of the public-houses, and then adjourns, box and all, to the establishment near the Marble Arch Tube Station. Here he is as well known as he formerly was in the King's Road; but whether he has his private billiard cue there I do not know.
"Well, I give it up, Philip," I yielded at last. "I claim my single point, though—that it was news to you that Mrs. Rooke knew."
Philip rose.
"Then come along," he said. "We must get it over before Chummy comes back. Light the candle, somebody."
He led the way to the cellar door.