Ashton-Kirk bent his brows, and one well kept hand smoothed the shaven chin.
"You say," and there was an inquiring glint in his eyes, "she was rather on friendly terms with the burglar."
"Why," replied Bat, reluctantly, "I wouldn't say friendly, exactly. She was laughing and did seem very much at her ease while she talked to him, I'll admit that. But what of the other things? What of the creeping across the room with the gun in her hand--of her listening at the wall? And what of the look of fear I saw on her face when that fellow opened the door for her to go out?"
"Of course," said he. "We must not overlook anything." Glancing at his watch, and apparently dismissing this particular point from his mind, he added: "It's now two-thirty, and I want to run around to the Polo Club. Will you come along?"
Mr. Scanlon was willing, and so they made their way from the rathskeller into the sunlight. The Polo Club occupied a magnificent modern building in a prominent location. They passed in at a door which was opened by a man in uniform, ostentatious in its soberness; at the end of a room, rich in rugs and paintings, they encountered another man, stout and impassive.
"Is Mr. Dennison here, do you know, Hocking?" asked Ashton-Kirk.
"Yes, sir, in the smoking-room," replied the man, impassively, but with certainty.
In the smoking-room they came upon Dennison, purple of jowl, with his white fat hands folded across his paunch, smoking a cigarette and looking out at a window.
"Oh, how are you?" lifting his eyes, but never stirring. "How do, Scanlon?"
"Quite comfortable here of an afternoon," said Ashton-Kirk as he dropped into a chair at the other side of the window. "I had no idea."
"How could you have?" complained Dennison; "you drop in only once or twice in a year, and then only of a night, and when old Hungerford is in town."
Ashton-Kirk smiled as he thought of those rare nights with Hungerford over the chess board--nights when he matched himself against an intelligence almost mystical, and out of each contact with which he emerged, drenched with new understanding.
"I suppose that's so," he admitted. "But I should get here oftener." He looked interestedly at the other, and added: "Get over your little jolt of the other night all right?"