“I am? Very well—you were saying—?”
“I was saying that I went into the kitchen—”
“Before that! Something about ‘instructed.’”
Poor Coombes smiled pathetically.
“Look here,” he said, bravely meeting the ferocious glare of his superior, “as man to man. What could I do?”
“You could stop smiling!” snapped Kerry. “Hell!” He paced several times up and down the room. “Go ahead, Coombes.”
“Well, there’s nothing much to report. I stayed in the kitchen, and the man from the Home office was in here alone for about half an hour.”
“Alone?”
“Inspector Whiteleaf stayed in the dining-room.”
“Had he been ‘instructed’ too?”