"I’m sorry to detain you, doctor; but now we’ve got you, I think we’ll have to keep you until the Hassendeans come in. One never knows what may turn up. They may have something to tell us which might need medical checking and you’ve been too much of a gift from the gods to part with so long as there’s a chance of our utilising you."
Dr. Ringwood tried to make his acquiescence a cheerful one, though he was thinking regretfully of his bed.
"It’s all in the day’s work," he said. "I’m only a bit worried about that case of scarlet next door. I’ll have to look in there before I go."
"So shall we," Sir Clinton explained. "Once we’ve got all the evidence from the family, we’ll need to ring up and get the body taken off to the mortuary. You say we can telephone from the house next door?"
"Yes. I had to go there to ring you up myself. The Hassendeans have no ’phone."
"We’ll go round with you then. . . . H’m! There’s the door-bell, Inspector. You’d better attend to it. Bring them in here, please."
Flamborough hurried out of the room; they heard some muffled talk broken by ejaculations of surprise and horror; and then the Inspector ushered Mr. and Miss Hassendean into the drawing-room. Dr. Ringwood was unfavourably impressed at the first glance. Mr. Hassendean was a red-faced, white-haired man of about seventy, with a feebly blustering manner. His sister, some five years younger, aped the air and dress of women twenty years her junior.
"What this? What’s this, eh?" Mr. Hassendean demanded as he came into the room. "God bless my soul! My nephew shot? What does it mean, eh?"
"That’s what we should like to know, sir," Inspector Flamborough’s quiet voice cut into the frothing torrent of the old man’s eloquence. "We’re depending on you to throw some light on the affair."
"On me?" Mr. Hassendean’s voice seemed to strain itself in the vain attempt to express his feelings at the Inspector’s suggestion. "I’m not a policeman, my good fellow; I’m a retired drysalter. God bless me! Do I look like Sherlock Holmes?"
He paused, apparently unable to find words for a moment.
"Now, look here, my good man," he went on, "I come home and I find you occupying my house, and you tell me that my young nephew has been shot. He’s a good-for-nothing cub, I admit; but that’s beside the point. I want to know who’s to blame for it. That’s a simple enough question, surely. And instead of answering it, you have the nerve to ask me to do your work for you! What do we pay police rates for, tell me that! And who are these men in my drawing-room? How did they come here?"
"This is Sir Clinton Driffield; this is Dr. Ringwood," the Inspector answered smoothly, taking no notice of Mr. Hassendean’s other remarks.
"Ah! I’ve heard of you, Sir Clinton," Mr. Hassendean acknowledged, less ungraciously. "Well, what about it?"
"We’ve met under rather unfortunate conditions, Mr. Hassendean," Sir Clinton admitted soothingly, "but they’re none of our choosing, you know. I quite understand your feelings; it must be a bad shock to come home to an affair like this. But I hope you’ll see your way to give us any information you have—anything that will assist us to get on the track of the person who shot your nephew. We really depend on you to help us at once, for every hour lost may make it more difficult to lay our hands on the criminal. Without knowing it, you may have the key to the thing in your hands."
More by his manner than by his words, the Chief Constable had succeeded in pacifying the old man.
"Well, if it’s put like that, I don’t mind," he conceded, with a slight lessening in the asperity of his tone. "Ask your questions and I’ll see what I can do for you."
Dr. Ringwood, watching the change in the situation, reflected sardonically to himself that a title had its uses when one came to deal with a snob.
"That old bounder was rude to the Inspector on principle; but when Sir Clinton Driffield asks precisely the same question, he’s quite amenable," he thought to himself. "What a type!"
The Chief Constable, when he began his interrogatory, was careful not to betray that he already had some information.
"Perhaps we’d better begin at the beginning, Mr. Hassendean," he suggested, with the air of one consulting a valued collaborator. "Could you throw any light on your nephew’s arrangements for this evening? Did he mean to stay in the house, or had he any outside engagement that you knew about?"
"He told me he was going out to dinner with that hussy next door."
Sir Clinton’s smile further disarmed old Hassendean.
"I’m afraid you’ll need to be more definite. There are so many hussies nowadays."
"You’re right there, sir! You’re right there. I agree with you. I’m speaking of the French one next door, her name’s Silverdale. My nephew was always hanging round her skirts, sir. I warned him against her, often enough."
"I always knew something would happen!" Miss Hassendean declared with the air of a justified Cassandra. "And now it has happened."
Sir Clinton returned to the main track.
