And here at any rate he was quite firm. Chance what might, that must be kept the men's affair only. As far as the women were concerned at present the accident was a pure accident. Well, an accident it must remain.
But what about that Police Inspector who had appeared so suddenly in our midst the night before, and for all Philip knew might be round again at any moment? Audrey Cunningham had been told nothing about that. She might have many opinions about Philip's delayed departure, but about a series of domiciliary visits by the police she could have one only, namely, that the loan of a studio wasn't worth it. In suppressing this piece of information Philip was actually doing his best to keep her in Lennox Street. To have informed her would have been much the same thing as asking her to leave.
And what exactly had passed when Philip's tenor voice, interrupting the Inspector's deep one, had said, "Well, perhaps you'd better come in"?
VIII
Of the four of us sitting there I alone had instantly realized what must have happened. Our Nosey Parker of a Westbury had been at work already. I remembered the dull insistence of the man and how he had said in my hearing that he and Inspector Webster "would be having a bit of a talk that evening." I recalled also the stupid but dangerous cunning with which he had repeated over and over again that Rooke had been the first on the scene of the accident. Well, he hadn't lost very much time. The Inspector had stood there in the doorway, and neither Esdaile, Hubbard nor Rooke had had the least idea why.
Now there are a good many of the commonly-accepted views on physiognomy that I for one don't share. One of these is about rather narrowly-set eyes. Webster, who was a very big red-and-black man, had these eyes under a sort of bison-front of close-curling hair, but I did not associate them with meanness and slyness at all. On the contrary, they had rather a kindly glint, and they reminded me of the infinitesimal slight cast that at certain moments makes some women irresistible. No, I did not set Inspector Webster down as a bad sort. At the same time there was no nonsense about him, and I should have thought twice before trying any tricks with him.
I was more thankful than I can tell you that Philip also, in spite of the emotional gamut he had run that day, still had resilience enough to sum the Inspector up very much as I did. There was no bland "Well, Inspector, and to what are we indebted for the pleasure of this visit?" nor anything of that kind. Perhaps that dangerous pistol, X-raying itself so plainly in our minds through the top of the escritoire, had forbidden any such attitude. I now know, as a matter of fact, the life-line on to which he had immediately and instinctively laid hold. Inspector Webster, whatever he had come for, was to be treated exactly as the women were to be treated, and the accident-theory was to hold the field.
So this is what had happened:—
The Inspector, after a few conventional remarks about being sorry to trouble us gentlemen for the second time that day and so on, had come down like a hammer straight upon our weakest point. This was the part that Monty Rooke had played in that morning's events. First of all he wanted (with our permission) to put a few words to Mr. Rooke. I think he used the word "permission" in good faith, and not as any kind of a veiled threat.