“And no one else?”
“I’m afraid not.” There was unmistakable regret in his quiet response.
“One of the young men you saw enter here has been killed,” Vance told him.
“Mr. Robin—alias Cock Robin,” supplemented Arnesson, with a comic grimace which affected me unpleasantly.
“Good Heavens! How unfortunate!” Pardee appeared genuinely shocked. “Robin? Wasn’t he the Champion Archer of Belle’s club?”
“His one claim to immortality.—That’s the chap.”
“Poor Belle!” Something in the man’s manner caused Vance to regard him sharply. “I hope she’s not too greatly upset by the tragedy.”
“She’s dramatizing it, naturally,” Arnesson returned. “So are the police, for that matter. Awful pother about nothing in particular. The earth is covered with ‘small crawling masses of impure carbohydrates’ like Robin—referred to in the aggregate as humanity.”
Pardee smiled with tolerant sadness,—he was obviously familiar with Arnesson’s cynicisms. Then he appealed to Markham.
“May I be permitted to see Miss Dillard and her uncle?”