“Sure, he’s guilty,” declared Heath with over-emphasis. “But that’s not what’s worrying me. To tell you the truth, I don’t like the name of this guy who was croaked—especially as he was croaked with a bow and arrow. . . .” He hesitated, a bit shamefaced. “Don’t it strike you as peculiar, sir?”
Markham nodded perplexedly.
“I see that you, too, remember your nursery rhymes,” he said, and turned away.
Vance fixed a waggish look on Heath.
“You referred to Mr. Sperling just now as a ‘bird,’ Sergeant. The designation was most apt. Sperling, d’ ye see, means ‘sparrow’ in German. And it was a sparrow, you recall, who killed Cock Robin with an arrow. . . . A fascinatin’ situation—eh, what?”
The Sergeant’s eyes bulged slightly, and his lips fell apart. He stared at Vance with almost ludicrous bewilderment.
“I said this here business was fishy!”
“I’d say, rather, it was avian, don’t y’ know.”
“You would call it something nobody’d understand,” Heath retorted truculently. It was his wont to become bellicose when confronted with the inexplicable.
Markham intervened diplomatically.