“They hope to, of course,” he replied vaguely. “Personally, I know but little about it beyond what I’ve read in the newspapers. It is a strange feature in the case that the body has not been found.”
“What about the will?”
“Ah! another very curious point; but I don’t attach much importance to it. Many hare-brained, wealthy young fools make wills in favour of women they admire. It is an everyday occurrence, only they generally revoke or destroy the will, or else spend all their money before they die. No; there is little in that, and certainly no clue. By the way, the lady to whom he has left his money is the wife of your friend the Earl. You knew Sternroyd, then?”
I was unprepared for this, but, affecting ignorance, answered:
“I saw him in the street one day. Lady Fyneshade introduced me. That is all I knew of him.”
The detective, apparently satisfied, did not press his question further; but a few minutes later, the performance having concluded and the theatre rapidly emptying, he suggested it was time to go, and outside, in Leicester Square, we shook hands and parted.
“Good-night,” he said heartily, as he turned to leave. “I shall be astir early to-morrow, and see if I can find the man who has eluded me to-night.”
“Good-night,” I laughed. “I shall look for the case in the papers.”
Then he buttoned his overcoat and strolled rapidly away along Cranbourne Street, while I made my way home in the opposite direction, my mind full of strangely dismal forebodings.
Somehow—I know not by what means—it had been impressed upon me during the last quarter of an hour I had been with Grindlay, that this shrewd police officer was not searching for the diamond thief, for, on reflection, I had a faint suspicion that, as we alighted from the cab and entered the vestibule, one of the men he suspected had actually passed us, and that my friend had stared him full in the face. I was too excited at the prospect of witnessing an arrest in the theatre to notice the incident at that moment, and, strangely enough, it was only when walking home absorbed in thought I remembered it.