«I don't think much of your burglary, Bunter,» said Lord Peter. «Competent, of course, but no imagination. I want imagination in a criminal. Where's the Morning Post?»
After a further silence, Lord Peter said: «You might send for the catalogue, Bunter, that Apollonios Rhodios[3] might be worth looking at. No, I'm damned if I'm going to stodge through that review, but you can stick the book on the library list if you like. His book on Crime was entertainin' enough as far as it went, but the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver — all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited. Look at Sugg.»
«I beg your pardon,» said Parker, «I wasn't attending. Argentines are steadying a little, I see.»
«Milligan,» said Lord Peter.
«Oil's in a bad way. Levy's made a difference there. That funny little boom in Peruvians that came on just before he disappeared has died away again. I wonder if he was concerned in it. D'you know at all?»
«I'll find out,» said Lord Peter, «what was it?»
«Oh, an absolutely dud enterprise that hadn't been heard of for years. It suddenly took a little lease of life last week. I happened to notice it because my mother got let in for a couple of hundred shares a long time ago. It never paid a dividend. Now it's petered out again.»
Wimsey pushed his plate aside and lit a pipe.
«Having finished, I don't mind doing some work,» he said. «How did you get on yesterday?»
«I didn't,» replied Parker. «I sleuthed up and down those flats in my own bodily shape and two different disguises. I was a gas-meter man and a collector for a Home for Lost Doggies, and I didn't get a thing to go on, except a servant in the top flat at the Battersea Bridge Road end of the row who said she thought she'd heard a bump on the roof one night. Asked which night, she couldn't rightly say. Asked if it was Monday night, she thought it very likely. Asked if it mightn't have been in that high wind on Saturday night that blew my chimney-pot off, she couldn't say but what it might have been. Asked if she was sure it was on the roof and not inside the flat, said to be sure they did find a picture tumbled down next morning. Very suggestible girl. I saw your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Appledore, who received me coldly, but could make no definite complaint about Thipps except that his mother dropped her h's, and that he once called on them uninvited, armed with a pamphlet about anti-vivisection. The Indian Colonel on the first floor was loud, but unexpectedly friendly. He gave me Indian curry for supper and some very good whisky, but he's a sort of hermit, and all he could tell me was that he couldn't stand Mrs. Appledore.»