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Meanwhile, if you like to make this house your headquarters, I shall be delighted to put you up." "Do you really mean that, Mr. Sutgrove?" he asked. "Of course I do," I replied. He hesitated a moment, then he accepted my invitation. Luck was on my side after all.
"The cream of the joke," he explained, when he recovered his powers of speech, "was that neither Winter nor Sutgrove had the slightest idea that I was foxing. I intended to inform them directly we were clear of the Pirate; but when I heard them discussing the matter, and determining to keep silence out of tenderness for my reputation, I could not resist keeping up the joke."
Again, he must have divined my thoughts, for he said reassuringly "You must not take too serious a view of the case. Miss Maitland is of a highly nervous temperament, and, I should imagine, rather prone to hysteria." Then, rising, he clapped me on the shoulder, "Take a cheerful view, Sutgrove. I'll bet you ten to one that her doctor will inform you that marriage will provide a complete cure."
"Besides, it was all about the Motor Pirate, and I can see that Sutgrove for one is quite sick of the subject." I was, and I wasn't, but I speedily declared that I was not when I saw that his daughter was bent upon hearing the story.
I said a lot more than I can recall now, though I can remember a good deal. Most of it was to the effect that I would make somebody pay dearly for the annoyance to which I had been subjected. Inspector Forrest listened patiently to me until I had finished. "Come, come, Mr. Sutgrove!" he said then. "You must not bear any malice.
Then, while our senior was dallying with an early strawberry, Winter gave me a lead. "By the way, Sutgrove," he said, "what's this I saw on the evening paper bills about a motor pirate?" I told him. His interest was awakened to such an extent that he forgot to taste the glass of port which stood before him, and which I had ordered out of compliment to the Colonel's ideas of what was desirable.
I could not reply, for at that moment Mannering entered. "Glad to see you home again, Sutgrove," he said heartily. "I'm not the only one either. Miss Maitland asked me to call, for after seeing you in such bad company this morning Hullo! I beg your pardon, I thought you were alone." He stopped suddenly on catching sight of Inspector Forrest.
Sutgrove," said the detective, smiling, "for there is precious little difference between the sexes so far as curiosity is concerned, in spite of the generally accepted opinion on the matter. But being curious, I naturally made the most minute search when I searched his place at St. Alban's.
So, directly the meal was finished, we adjourned for our coffee and cigars to my sanctum, where, in front of a comfortable fire, Forrest made no difficulty about satisfying our curiosity. "You see," he began, when his cigar was once well alight, "I was every bit as curious as Mrs. Sutgrove." "Or myself," I interrupted. "Or Mr.
Are you prepared for a little amateur burglary, Sutgrove?" "Ready for anything," I assured him. "It seems a little absurd to suspect Mannering," he remarked meditatively. "Yet there are times when a woman's intuition is a better guide than a man's ratiocination." "You didn't get any clue in Amsterdam, then?" I asked tentatively, for I was curious to hear the results of his journey. "No, no.
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