“It’s a really first-class sensation,” Dick said, again referring to the curious affair. “Pity I can’t publish something of it to-morrow. It’s a good thing chucked away.”
“Yes,” I replied. “But Patterson has some object in imposing secrecy on us.”
“Of course,” he answered thoughtfully.
There was a pause. We both smoked on. Not a sound penetrated there save the solemn ticking of the clock and the distant strains of a piano in some man’s rooms across the square.
“Do you know, Frank,” my companion said after some reflection, and looking at me with a rather curious expression—“do you know that I have some strange misgivings?”
“Misgivings!” I echoed. “Of what?”
“Well,” he said, “did anything strike you as strange in Patterson’s manner?”
“To tell the truth,” I answered, “something did. His attitude was unusual—quite unusual, to-night.”
“He’s a funny Johnnie. That story of the snake on the pavement—isn’t it rather too strange to be believed?”
“At first sight it appears extraordinary, but remember that in the laboratory upstairs we found other snakes. The occupier of the house evidently went in for the reptiles as pets.”