I sat down with the rolling-pin in my hand. He made me feel uneasy. Though what he said was beyond me altogether. And as he stood in front of the grate he kept saying things which made me uneasier still.
'Mrs. Merrett, I'm not a romantic character. I'm without feeling; dead to emotion. It's the consequence of the professional life I've led; the profession first, the rest nowhere. You may beat against this heart for years, and yet not find entrance.' He banged his hand against his side. I should have thought it hurt him. 'I'm a man who only believes what he sees--and only about a quarter of that. Therefore, when I tell you that I am possessed by an overwhelming, a predominating conviction that something has happened to your husband, you will know that my conviction is not a thing to be laughed at.'
'But what can have happened to him?'
'As I was going home yesterday afternoon, I slipped on a piece of orange peel; that means danger. In our street I saw three black cats; that means mourning for a friend. I found myself putting my walking-stick upside down into the stand; that means trouble. When I got upstairs, death stared me in the face out of my sitting-room fire. As I was smoking a pipe, your husband's portrait fell from its place on the wall, and chipped a piece off one of the corners; you know what that means as well as I do. I'll say nothing about the horrid dreams which haunted me all through the night because I'm not a superstitious man, and they may have had something to do with the dressed crab I had for supper. But I will say this, that I woke up this morning profoundly persuaded that there is something wrong. And that persuasion is with me now.'
'But what can be wrong?'
He came and leaned against the edge of the table.
'Mind the flour,' I said.
He waved his hand.
'What does it matter about minding the flour when we've got such facts as those to face? Mrs. Merrett, we have to put two and two together. I unhesitatingly say that the result of our doing that is to point the finger of suspicion towards the man who masqueraded as John Smith.' He rapped his knuckles so hard against the board that a piece of suet which I had left there stuck to them. 'If you don't go to Mr. John Smith, alias the Hon. Douglas Howarth, and ask him, as I asked him, what he's done with Mr. Babbacombe, you'll be neglecting your duty as a wife.'
'Mr. FitzHoward!'