“Never; unless I see him now.”
“Meaning me? I never came across such a man. What do you mean by keeping on asking if I’m Batters? What are you driving at? I won’t have it, whatever it is. Why Batters——” He stopped: then second thoughts appearing best, changed from heat to cold. “Batters was not my sort at all.”
The man’s manner puzzled me.
“What was there about Benjamin Batters which makes you resent any comparison with him?”
He hesitated, putting up his fingers to scratch his head, visibly perturbed.
“Excuse me, but I came here to put a question or two, not to answer any. If you’d told me at the first that Captain Lander was a friend of yours, I should have taken myself off straightway, like as I’m going to now.”
I stepped between him and the door.
“No you don’t. You stopped at the beginning to please yourself; now you’ll remain a little longer to please me. Before you leave this room you’ll give me satisfactory answers to one or two questions.”
“Who says I will?”
“I do. If you decline I send for a policeman. Then I think you’ll find yourself in Queer Street.”