“Well—something like that . . . perhaps. One can’t tell. It’s deuced confusin’.” He turned an indolent eye on the Sergeant. “By the by, what sort of gun did your burglar use?”
Heath gave a gruff, uneasy laugh.
“You score there, Mr. Vance. I’ve got both bullets—thirty-twos, fired from a revolver, not an automatic. But you’re not trying to intimate——”
“Tut, tut, Sergeant. Like Goethe, I’m merely seeking for more illumination, if one may translate Licht——”
Markham interrupted this garrulous evasion.
“I’m going to the Greene house after lunch, Sergeant. Can you come along?”
“Sure I can, sir. I was going out anyway.”
“Good.” Markham brought forth a box of cigars. “Meet me here at two. . . . And take a couple of these Perfectos before you go.”
Heath selected the cigars, and put them carefully into his breast pocket. At the door he turned with a bantering grin.
“You coming along with us, Mr. Vance—to guide our erring footsteps, as they say?”