"There must be so much more you want to know, Mr. Harley," said
Phil Abingdon. "Will you come and see me?"
He promised to do so. His sentiments were so strangely complex
that he experienced a desire for solitude in order that he might
strive to understand them. As he stood at the door watching the
car move toward the Strand he knew that to-day he could not count
upon his intuitive powers to warn him of sudden danger. But he
keenly examined the faces of passers-by and stared at the
occupants of those cabs and cars which were proceeding in the
same direction as the late Sir Charles Abingdon's limousine.
No discovery rewarded him, however, and he returned upstairs to
his office deep in thought. "I am in to nobody," he said as he
passed the desk at which Innes was at work.
"Very good, Mr. Harley."
Paul Harley walked through to the private office and, seating
himself at the big, orderly table, reached over to a cupboard
beside him and took out a tin of smoking mixture. He began very
slowly to load his pipe, gazing abstractedly across the room at
the tall Burmese cabinet.
He realized that, excepting the extraordinary behaviour and the
veiled but significant statements of Nicol Brinn, his theory that
Sir Charles Abingdon had not died from natural causes rested upon
data of the most flimsy description. From Phil Abingdon he had
learned nothing whatever. Her evidence merely tended to confuse
the case more hopelessly.
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