Though he accepted Aline's father as a necessary evil and recognized that his position entitled him to look at people as sharply as he liked, whatever their feelings, he would be hanged if he was going to extend this privilege to Mr. Peters' valet. This man standing beside him was giving him a look that seemed to his sensitive imagination to have been fired red-hot from a gun; and this annoyed and exasperated Freddie.
"What do you want?" he said querulously. "What are you staring at me like that for?"
Ashe sat down, leaned his elbows on the bed, and applied the look again from a lower elevation.
"Ah!" he said.
Whatever may have been Ashe's defects, so far as the handling of the inductive-reasoning side of Gridley Quayle's character was concerned, there was one scene in each of his stories in which he never failed. That was the scene in the last chapter where Quayle, confronting his quarry, unmasked him. Quayle might have floundered in the earlier part of the story, but in his big scene he was exactly right. He was curt, crisp and mercilessly compelling.
Ashe, rehearsing this interview in the passage before his entry, had decided that he could hardly do better than model himself on the detective. So he began to be curt, crisp and mercilessly compelling to Freddie; and after the first few sentences he had that youth gasping for air.
"I will tell you," he said. "If you can spare me a few moments of your valuable time I will put the facts before you. Yes; press that bell if you wish—and I will put them before witnesses. Lord Emsworth will no doubt be pleased to learn that his son, whom he trusted, is a thief!"
Freddie's hand fell limply. The bell remained un-touched. His mouth opened to its fullest extent. In the midst of his panic he had a curious feeling that he had heard or read that last sentence somewhere before. Then he remembered. Those very words occurred in Gridley Quayle, Investigator—The Adventure of the Blue Ruby.
"What—what do you mean?" he stammered.
"I will tell you what I mean. On Saturday night a valuable scarab was stolen from Lord Emsworth's private museum. The case was put into my hands——"