The flat in which I live with the old housekeeper who looks after me is not in Chelsea at all, but a quarter of an hour's walk away, just round the corner from Queen's Gate. It is exceedingly comfortable (as indeed it should be considering the rent I am made to pay for it), I have my own furniture, and on the whole I don't ask for a much better place to work in. For, quite apart from my paper, I do work, and I don't want to give you the impression that the whole of my leisure time is given over to the investigation of what happens to my Chelsea friends.
I was, as a matter of fact, particularly busy just about that time. Day after day I was getting up at half-past six in the morning, breakfasting at my table as I worked, and continuing without interruption till it was time for luncheon and the office. Since you are probably not in the white-elephant line of business, I won't tell you which of my novels I was at work on. I will only say that I at any rate was interested in it, and, severe as was the strain of writing from seven o'clock in the morning till midday, I sometimes hated to break off. Mrs. Jardine had orders not to admit anybody whomsoever between those hours, and obeyed them to the letter.
You may judge then of my surprise when there walked into my study at nine o'clock in the morning, and not over Mrs. Jardine's dead body, Billy Mackwith.
"Don't scold the old lady," he began without preface. "I suppose she hadn't any barbed wire except that on her chin--it is rather like one of the gooseberries we used to make on the old wiring-course. I had to see you."
"Had breakfast? Have a cup of coffee?" I asked him.
"Nothing, thanks. Well, I think I saved friend Philip a certain amount of trouble yesterday," he said, putting down his hat, stick and gloves. I don't think Mackwith buys a glossy new silk topper every time he goes out, but I do honestly believe he buys a new pair of lemon-colored gloves.
"At the inquest on that fellow," he replied. "And by the way, I saw the _Roundabout_ too. I suppose it has its humorous side, but it's very annoying too. I should go for 'em for libel. A house can be libeled, you know. Anyway, it's a good job he's out of town."
I was on the point of saying, "A good job he's what?" when I checked myself. If you remember, I had last seen William Mackwith, K.C., when I had left him at Sloane Square Station an hour or two after that confounded aeroplane accident. He and Hubbard had gone off to keep their respective appointments, while I myself had followed our check-coated friend Westbury into a public-house. Whether either Esdaile or Hubbard had seen him since I didn't know. I now gathered that Billy at any rate hadn't seen Esdaile.