It would have been a better joke
on me then. But as for the rest, as for really trying to make me
take that stuff, of course, that was all bunkum."
Tavernake sat quite still in his chair for several minutes.
"Will you take another gin fizz, Mr. Pritchard?" he asked.
"Why not?"
Tavernake gave the order. He sat on his stool whistling softly
to himself.
"Then I suppose," he said at last, "I must have looked a pretty
sort of an ass coming through the wall like a madman."
Pritchard shook his head.
"You looked just about what you were," he answered, "a d----d
good sort. I'm not playing up to you that it was all pretense.
You can never trust that gang. The blackguard outside was in
earnest, anyway. After all, you know, they wouldn't miss me if I
were to drop quietly out. There 's no one else they 're quite so
much afraid of. There 's no one else knows quite as much about
them."
"Well, we'll let it go at that," Tavernake declared. "You know
so much of all these people, though, that I rather wish you 'd
tell me something I want very much to know."
"It's by telling nothing," the detective replied quickly, "that I
know as much as I do. Just one cocktail, eh?"
Tavernake shook his head.
"I drank my first cocktail last night," he remarked. "I had
supper with the professor and his daughter."
"Not Elizabeth?" Pritchard asked swiftly.
Tavernake shook his head.
"With Miss Beatrice," he answered.
Pritchard set down his glass.
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