“Still, mere suspicion is one thing, and evidence strong enough to warrant arrest is another,” he added after a moment’s careful consideration. “Perhaps, after all, I am wrong. Somebody else may have done it. We shall see.”
“Whoever it is I shall do my best to bring them to justice,” I cried hotly. “I don’t care whether it is Paul Zouche—”
“Of course not,” replied Casteno with much dignity. “I have no doubt you will communicate all I have repeated to you to Scotland Yard. Indeed, I never had any two opinions on that score. At the same time you must excuse me if I don’t evince any keen desire to debate the matter further.”
“I never asked you to do so,” I retorted, anxious not to be outdone in courtesy by the Spaniard. “All your statements to me were practically volunteered.”
“True,” said Casteno. “As a matter of fact, I felt they were honestly due to you. I saw that my absence from your rooms at the time when the colonel was murdered looked very ugly for me. Very ugly, indeed.”
“Particularly after you had warned the man only an hour previously that if he didn’t do a certain thing, which he subsequently declined to do for you, he would regret his action before four and twenty hours had passed.”
“Quite so. Quite so. All the same, that was but a figure of speech. Myself, I had no idea of violence or revenge. My sole impression was of his gross injustice to yourself, which I felt Time himself would most quickly avenge.
“Still,” he went on, and now his tones were particularly grave, “don’t let us go on debating this business further. It is very awful—it is dreadfully tragic—and it seems to strike right at the heart of the family life of us both. Let us leave it where it stands. I am sure myself a crime like that, in the heart of London, can’t remain hidden for many days, particularly with such assistance as you will be able to give the police when you have a few moments to spare to write or to wire to the headquarters staff at Scotland Yard. Therefore don’t pursue the matter with me any longer. Realise that you, and I too, are engaged on a business of gigantic international importance. Aren’t you curious to hear what I have arranged since I sent you that telegram informing you my father, as I suppose I must now call the hunchback when I speak of him to you, had picked up with this flying machine inventor, Sparhawk, and had actually determined to go on a journey through the air with him to-morrow in a brand new flying machine?”
“I am very curious,” I admitted. “I had no idea old Peter had such adventurous tastes.”
“Nor have any of his friends. Yet such is the fact. He has really two natures—the student’s and the explorer’s,—always at work within him; and I never knew him have a big job on, like the deciphering of those three manuscripts relating to the Lake of Sacred Treasure, that he has not eased the strain on his brain, caused by the hours of close attention which the work demands, by going on some wild excursion of this sort. Curiously enough, too, he has always believed in flying machines. It has been one of the dreams of his life to patent one which he could present to Spain for use in warfare. Indeed, all the time Santos-Dumont was making those daring ascents of his in Paris he haunted the French capital in the hope he might pick up some tips for his own models, which he keeps in a disused stable near the Crystal Palace, and which he works on every Sunday after he has heard Mass in that impressive-looking church in Spanish Place.”