«Shouldn't have thought he ever went in for that kind of gamble.»
«He doesn't as a rule. That's the funny part of it.»
«Well, you never know,» said Lord Peter; «people do these things, just to prove to themselves or somebody else that they could make a fortune that way if they liked. I've done it myself in a small way.»
He knocked out his pipe and rose to go.
«I say, old man,» he said suddenly, as Parker was letting him out, «does it occur to you that Freke's story doesn't fit in awfully well with what Anderson said about the old boy having been so jolly at dinner on Monday night? Would you be, if you thought you'd got anything of that sort?»
«No, I shouldn't,» said Parker; «but,» he added with his habitual caution, «some men will jest in the dentist's waiting-room. You, for one.»
«Well, that's true,» said Lord Peter, and went downstairs.
VIII
Lord Peter reached home about midnight, feeling extraordinarily wakeful and alert. Something was jigging and worrying in his brain; it felt like a hive of bees, stirred up by a stick. He felt as though he were looking at a complicated riddle, of which he had once been told the answer but had forgotten it and was always on the point of remembering.
«Somewhere,» said Lord Peter to himself, «somewhere I've got the key to these two things. I know I've got it, only I can't remember what it is. Somebody said it. Perhaps I said it. I can't remember where, but I know I've got it. Go to bed, Bunter, I shall sit up a little. I'll just slip on a dressing-gown.»