"Not a word," said Barker cheerfully. "It's about the thinnest story I've known put up for some time. But then I should think the man was hard put to it to find any way out of the evidence at all. He did his damnedest — I will say that for him."
"Well, look at it from the other way, and can you think of a reasonable explanation for Lamont's killing Sorrell?"
"Tut, tut, Grant, you've been at the Yard for I don't know how many years, and you're looking at this late stage for reason-able murders. You need a holiday, man. Lamont probably killed Sorrell because the way he ate had got on his nerves. Besides, it isn't any of our business to fit psychology to people or to provide motives or anything of that sort. So don't worry your head. Fit them with good watertight evidence and provide them with a cell, and that's all we have to bother about."
There was a short silence, and Grant gathered up his papers preparatory to taking his leave and getting along to Waterloo.
"Look here," said Barker out of the silence, "all joshing apart — do you believe the man didn't do it?"
"I don't see how he could not have," Grant said. "There's the evidence. I can't say why I'm uneasy about the thing, but that doesn't alter the fact that I am."
"Is this an example of the famous flair?" said Barker, with a return to his former manner.
But Grant would not be other than serious this morning. "No; I think it's just that I have seen Lamont and talked to him when he was telling his story, and you haven't."
"That's what I said to begin with," Barker reminded him. "Lamont has tried a sob-story on you and put it over…Put it out of your head, Grant, until you get even a tittle of evidence to substantiate it. Flair is all very well, and I don't deny that you have been uncanny once or twice, but it has always been more or less in accordance with the evidence before, and in this case it most emphatically isn't."
"That's the very thing that makes me worry most. Why should I not be pleased with the case as it stands? What is it that makes me not pleased? There is something, but I'm blowed if I can see what it is. I keep feeling that something is wrong somewhere. I want something that will either tighten up the evidence against Lamont or loosen it."