CHAPTER XVI.

Mr. Gerard Denton received his visitors with a surface of nervous affability which was too thin to conceal the antipathy which underlay it.

“We’ve come together to see you, Mr. Denton,” the Inspector began, “because you made a mistake. You should have given him half a crown.”

Mr. Gerard looked, and may have been, genuinely puzzled for a moment by this opening.

“If there’s anyone I ought to give half a crown to…,” he began vaguely.

“I mean the gardener’s boy.”

Comprehension came, and confusion with it.

“I suppose I can give the boy what I choose?”

Mr. Denton was aware, even as he uttered it, of the weak futility of the reply.

“It’s not a question of what you choose to give the boy, but of what explanation you choose to give us. We’ve heard what he has to say.” There was a good-humoured grimness about Inspector Pinkey in these crises of pursuit, such as that of a butcher who enjoys his job. He was apt to become quick and even epigram­matic in retort. The little awkwardness which he had felt on the first occasion when his hostess had suggested that she herself might be cast for the role of criminal would have disappeared very quickly had he once decided to regard her in that light.

Superintendent Trackfield who, up to this point, had been a silent learner of the methods of the central organization, which were reputed to be so superior to his own, thought it right to interpose the remark that Mr. Denton was not obliged to make any reply which would incriminate himself, but, of course, any explanation he could offer.

“The fact is, I got flustered. It was a silly thing to do.”

The reply came in a somewhat more confident tone, responding to that of the warning he had received, but it was Chief Inspector Pinkey who resumed charge of the conversation.

“It’s never wise to get flustered.”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean, it was silly to give the boy any money.”

“It was silly to give the boy as much as you did. He’s never stopped sucking sweets since he got it. Do you mind telling us why you gave him any at all? It’s only fair to tell you, Mr. Denton, that we’ve had his account of the matter.”

“Because he’d seen me come out of the window just before, and I didn’t want to be mixed up in it more than I could help.”

“He saw you come out through the window twice.”

“Yes, but—”

“Then the statement you have already made is untrue?”

“Yes, but—”

“Should you like an opportunity of amending that statement? Suppose you call at the police station at seven this evening? That’ll be a quiet time.”

He did not look for a reply, and Gerard Denton understood that it was an order rather than an invitation. The two officers turned to go.

The Superintendent was inwardly rather surprised at the respite which this arrangement gave. “You feel sure he’ll come?” he asked, as they went down the drive.

Inspector Pinkey was in a genial mood. He had some reason for that, having demonstrated his ability to the rural mind. He gave a ready explanation.

“Yes, he’ll come sure enough. It’s that or bolt. And if he bolts now, it’s just like hanging himself. He’ll spend the time making up some lie or other that’ll do the job in another way.”

“He’ll try to get hold of the boy.”

“Yes, but he won’t succeed. That’s partly why I put him off till evening. We’ll take the boy back with us now, and have his statement first. We needn’t let him leave till Mr. Gerard’s walked in. It’s another matter when he’ll walk out, and where to.”

The boy was still at work on the cabbage planting.

“Tommy,” said Inspector Pinkey, “how long was it after the shot was fired that Mr. Gerard came out of that window? I mean the first time he came out.”

There was a pause before the reply came. The boy seemed confused or possibly afraid, lest he might increase the depth of the pit into which he had fallen already. His eyes seemed to dodge those of the Inspector, to look past or beyond him. At last he said: “It wasn’t after, it was before.”

As he said this, Inspector Trackfield looked round, following the direction of the boy’s glance. Gerard Denton stood a few yards behind them.

Whether it was that they had been absorbed in their own conversation, or that he had followed on slippered feet, or that he had trodden the grassy edging of the drive, or a combination of these circumstances, the fact remained that the vital question had been asked and answered with the boy under his own eye.

“Mr. Denton, you’ve no right…,” Inspector Pinkey began angrily, and then checked himself. It was seldom, indeed, that he lost his self-control in such ways.

“I suppose I can walk in my own garden?”

The Inspector did not answer. He said to the boy: “You’d better put that trowel down and come with us.”