“Nevertheless, you have a better excuse than I. In the circumstances it is most important that we should get in touch with this man.”
“Very well,” I said, ruefully. “I will do my best. But you don’t seriously think, Harley, that the danger comes from there?”
Paul Harley took his dinner jacket from the chair upon which the man had laid it out, and turned to me.
“My dear Knox,” he said, “you may remember that I spoke, recently, of retiring from this profession?”
“You did.”
“My retirement will not be voluntary, Knox. I shall be kicked out as an incompetent ass; for, respecting the connection, if any, between the narrative of Colonel Menendez, the bat wing nailed to the door of the house, and Mr. Colin Camber, I have not the foggiest notion. In this, at last, I have triumphed over Auguste Dupin. Auguste Dupin never confessed defeat.”
CHAPTER X. THE NIGHT WALKER
If luncheon had seemed extravagant, dinner at Cray’s Folly proved to be a veritable Roman banquet. To associate ideas of selfishness with Miss Beverley was hateful, but the more I learned of the luxurious life of this queer household hidden away in the Surrey Hills the less I wondered at any one’s consenting to share such exile. I had hitherto counted an American freak dinner, organized by a lucky plunger and held at the Café de Paris, as the last word in extravagant feasting. But I learned now that what was caviare in Monte Carlo was ordinary fare at Cray’s Folly.
Colonel Menendez was an epicure with an endless purse. The excellence of one of the courses upon which I had commented led to a curious incident.