“Presumably so that curious persons should not examine their contents,” answered Frank, with great amiability.
“Where’s that man? He’s murdered my sister. He’s a blackguard and a murderer, and I’ll tell him so to his face.”
“I was hoping to find you here, Mr. Bush. I wanted to have a talk with you. Won’t you sit down?”
“No, I won’t sit down,” he answered aggressively. “This ain’t the ’ouse that a gentleman would sit down in. I’ll be even with ’im yet. I’ll tell the jury a pretty story. He deserves to be strung up, he does.”
Frank looked sharply at the auctioneer’s clerk, noting the keen suspicious eyes, the thin lips, and the expression of low cunning. Wishing to prevent a scandalous scene at the inquest, for Basil was ill enough and wretched enough without having to submit to cross-examination on his domestic affairs, Frank thought it would not be difficult to bring James Bush to the frame of mind he desired; but the distaste with which this person inspired him led the doctor to use a very brutal frankness. He felt with such a man it was better not to mince matters, and unnecessary to clothe his meaning with flattering euphemisms.
“What d’you think you’ll get out of making a row at the inquiry?” he said, looking fixedly into the other’s eyes.
“Oh, you’ve thought of that, ’ave you? Did Master Basil send you to get round me? It won’t work, young feller, I mean to make it as ’ot for Basil as I can. I’ve ’ad something to put up with, I ’ave. He’s simply treated me like dirt. I wasn’t good enough for ’im, if you please.”
He hissed the words with the utmost malevolence, and it was possible to imagine that he cared little for his sister’s death, except that it gave opportunity for paying off the score which had so long rankled with him.
“Supposing you sat down quietly and listened to me without interruption for five minutes.”
“You’re trying to bamboozle me, but you won’t. I can see through you as if you was a pane of glass. You people in the West End—you think you know everything!”