"I meant as regards its properties," Sir Clinton interposed. "I’m not an expert in these things like you chemical people."
"I’m not an alkaloid expert," Miss Hailsham objected. "All I can remember about it is that it’s used in Twilight Sleep."
"I believe it is, now that you mention it," Sir Clinton agreed, politely. "By the way, have you a car, Miss Hailsham?"
"Yes. A Morris-Oxford four-seater."
"A saloon?"
"No, a touring model. Why do you ask?"
"Someone’s been asking for information about a car which seems to have knocked a man over on the night of the last fog. You weren’t out that night, I suppose, Miss Hailsham?"
"I was, as it happened. I went out to a dance. But I’d a sore throat; and the fog made it worse; so I came away very early and got home as best I could. But it wasn’t my car that knocked anyone down. I never had an accident in my life."
"You might have been excused in that fog, I think, even if you had a collision. But evidently it’s not your car we’re after. What was the number of the car we heard about, Inspector?"
Flamborough consulted his notebook.
"GX.9074, sir."
"Say that again," Markfield demanded, pricking up his ears.
"GX.9074 was the number."
"That’s the number of my car," Markfield volunteered.
He thought for some time, apparently trying to retrace his experiences in the fog. At last his face lighted up.
"Oh, I guess I know what it is. When I was piloting Dr. Ringwood that night, a fellow nearly walked straight into my front mudguard. I may have hurt his feelings by what I said about his brains, but I swear I didn’t touch him with the car."
"Not our affair," Sir Clinton hastened to assure him. "It’s a matter for your insurance company if anything comes of it. And I gathered from Dr. Ringwood that you didn’t exactly break records in your trip across town, so I doubt if you need worry."
"I shan’t," said Markfield, crossly. "You can refer him to me if he comes to you again."
"We’d nothing to do with the matter," Sir Clinton pointed out. "He was told he’d get the owner’s address from the County Council. I expect he got into a calmer frame of mind when he’d had time to think."
He turned to Miss Hailsham, who seemed to have recovered complete control over herself during this interlude.
"I think that’s all we need worry you with, Miss Hailsham. I’m sorry that we put you to so much trouble."
As a sign that the interview was at an end, he moved over to open the door for her.
"I certainly don’t wish you success," she said icily, as she left the room.
"Well, I think that’s all we have to do here, Inspector," Sir Clinton said as he turned back from the open door. "We mustn’t take up any more of Dr. Markfield’s time. I don’t want to hurry you too much," he added to Markfield, "but you’ll let us have your official report as soon as you can, won’t you?"
Markfield promised with a nod, and the two officials left the building. When they reached headquarters again, Sir Clinton led the way to his own office.
"Sit down for a moment or two, Inspector," he invited. "You may as well glance over the London man’s report when you’re about it. Here it is—not for actual use, of course, until we get the official version from him."
He passed over a paper which Flamborough unfolded.
"By the way, sir," the Inspector inquired before beginning to read, "is there any reason for keeping back this information? These infernal reporters are all over me for details; and if this poison affair could be published without doing any harm, I might as well dole it out to them to keep them quiet. They haven’t had much from me in the last twenty-four hours, and it’s better to give them what we can."
Sir Clinton seemed to attach some importance to this matter, for he considered it for a few seconds before replying.
"Let them have the name of the stuff," he directed at last. "I don’t think I’d supply them with any details, though. I’m quite satisfied about the name of the drug, but the dose is still more or less a matter of opinion, and we’d better not say anything about that."
Flamborough glanced up from the report in his hand.
"Markfield and the London man both seem to put the dose round about the same figure—eight milligrammes," he said.
"Both of them must be super-sharp workers," Sir Clinton pointed out. "I don’t profess to be a chemist, Inspector, but I know enough about things to realise that they’ve done a bit of a feat there. However, let’s get on to something more immediately interesting. What did you make of the Hailsham girl?"
"What did I make of her?" Flamborough repeated, in order to gain a little time. "I thought she was more or less what I’d expected her to be, sir. A hard vixen with a good opinion of herself—and simply mad with rage at being jilted: that’s what I made of her. Revengeful, too. And a bit vulgar, sir. No decent girl would talk like that about a dead man to a set of strangers."
"She hadn’t much to tell us that was useful," Sir Clinton said, keeping to the main point. "And I quite agree with you as to the general tone."
Flamborough turned to a matter which had puzzled him during their visit to the Institute:
"What did you want young Hassendean’s notebook for, sir? I didn’t quite make that out."
"Why, you saw what I got out of it: arithmetical errors which proved conclusively that he was a careless worker who didn’t take any trouble at all to verify his results."
"I had a kind of notion that you got more out of it than that, sir, or you wouldn’t have asked to see Markfield’s notebook as well. It doesn’t take someone else’s notebook to spot slips in a man’s arithmetic, surely."
Sir Clinton gazed blandly at his subordinate:
"Now that you’ve got that length, it would be a pity to spoil your pleasure in the rest of the inference. Just think it out and tell me the result, to see if we both reach the same conclusion independently. You’ll find a weights-and-measures conversion table useful."
"Conversion table, sir?" asked the Inspector, evidently quite at sea.
"Yes. ‘One metre equals 39·37 inches,’ and all that sort of thing. The sort of stuff one used at school, you know."
"Too deep for me, sir," the Inspector acknowledged ruefully. "You’ll need to tell me the answer. And that reminds me, what made you ask whether the dose could have been fifteen times the maximum?"
The Chief Constable was just about to take pity on his subordinate when the desk-telephone rang sharply. Sir Clinton picked up the receiver.
". . . Yes. Inspector Flamborough is here."
He handed the receiver across to the Inspector, who conducted a disjointed conversation with the person at the other end of the wire. At length Flamborough put down the instrument and turned to Sir Clinton with an expression of satisfaction on his face.
"We’re on to something, sir. That was Fossaway ringing up from Fountain Street. It seems a man called there a few minutes ago and began fishing round to know if there was any likelihood of a reward being offered in connection with the bungalow case. He seemed as if he might know something, and they handed him over to Detective-Sergeant Fossaway to see what he could make of him. Fossaway’s fairly satisfied that there’s something behind it, though he could extract nothing whatever from the fellow in the way of definite statements."
"Has Fossaway got him there still?"
"No, sir. He’d no power to detain him, of course; and the fellow turned stubborn in the end and went off without saying anything definite."
"I hope they haven’t lost him."