“Depend upon it that he’s never dared to set foot outside London all this time. He knows well enough that the Metropolis is the safest place in the whole world in which a criminal may conceal himself. Only a bungler attempts to get away abroad.”
Silence again fell between us. The quiet was unbroken save for the slow ticking of the clock upon the mantelshelf. Of a sudden, with a rather curious glance, he bent forward to me, eagerly saying—
“Now in this affair we must be perfectly candid with each other. You must conceal nothing from me.”
“I have concealed nothing,” I protested, surprised at his curious attitude, as though he held me in some suspicion.
“I don’t allege that you have,” he answered. “But I want you to answer truthfully a question which is of highest importance. I want you to tell me whether, on the afternoon of the day you were called by Patterson to Kensington, your friend Cleugh was here, at home.”
“No, he certainly wasn’t. I arrived home first, and he came in perhaps ten minutes or a quarter of an hour later than usual,” I answered, wondering what connexion this could have with the inquiry.
“And after you made the discovery you did not telegraph or communicate with him in any way? I take it that you were surprised to meet him in that house.”
“Certainly I was,” I responded. “But he had an appointment with Lily Lowry, and finding that she could not keep it, he came along to Kensington to ascertain the nature of the event about which Patterson had wired to me.”
The detective’s features relaxed into a strange smile.
“Would you be surprised then to know that your friend never called at the Police-Station on that evening, but went straight to Phillimore Place and there joined me while you were absent inquiring of the neighbours? That very evening I inquired of the constable on duty at the door of the station, and of others, all of whom told me that no one had called to inquire for Patterson except yourself.”