“I beg your pardon,” he answered with a look of chagrin. “I’ve been under a strain, I suppose, and I forgot that you have nothing at stake.”
“Not so fast, Estabrook,” I said. “Take another nip of the brandy. I prescribe it for you. And not so fast. I have a good deal at stake.”
“What?”
“My case,” I said.
He looked at me with admiration.
“Furthermore,” I went on, “I feel a certain brotherhood with you, young man. You are the first person with whom I’ve rolled on the sod for many years. I have punched you in the neck. You are now my patient and my guest. You have confided in me. You have made an unconscious appeal to me for help. Above all, I am one of those old fogies you have mentioned, who secretly mourn the dying-out of romance. Here!—a glass!—to adventure!”
Estabrook smiled sourly, but he drank.
“Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate your spirit and, permit me to say, also your attempt to make me treat this terrible affair in a spirit of sport. But old Margaret is the superlative of stubbornness. We cannot expect to go to her to obtain information. I have lived in the house with her for more than six years. Can I say whether she is a saint or a crafty villainess? No. I know no more now than when I shook her in my anger on the evening the Judge died. She has never addressed me of her own will since. She will give up nothing to me. You have tried her already.”
“I am less conservative in my ideas,” I answered. “Since we are in this field of turbulence and mystery, let us be turbulent and mysterious. All that you say is true. Therefore, we must force the truth from Margaret Murchie.”
“You mean to induce her—” he began.