The detective bowed.
“Miss Trevert,” he said,—and he spoke perfectly respectfully though his words were blunt,—“I can well believe that!”
The girl looked up quickly. She scanned his face rather apprehensively.
“What do you mean?” she asked, “I don’t understand....”
“I mean,” was the detective’s answer, given in his quiet, level voice, “that when you attempted to mislead Inspector Humphries you did nobody any good!”
The girl bent her head without replying, and in silence they regained the house. At the house door they parted, Mary going indoors while the detective remained standing on the drive. Very deliberately he produced a short briar pipe, cut a stub of dark plug tobacco from a flat piece he carried in his pocket, crammed the tobacco into his pipe, and lit it. Reflectively he blew a thin spiral of smoke into the still air.
“He told me about that fat butler’s evidence,” he said to himself; “he put me wise about that window being open; he gave me the office about the paint on the finger-nails of Mr. H.P.”
He ticked off each point on his fingers with the stem of his pipe.
“Why?” said Mr. Manderton aloud, addressing a laurel-bush.