"Inspector then. Well, I've seen him. Had a talk with him. Funny sort of talk too--I've been puzzled about it ever since. I was loafing round Sloane Square. There's a flower-woman there, interesting type of head--this sort----" He turned over one of the sketches and on the back of it his pencil flowed into a few swift assured lines. ("That's rather like her, by the way," he said in parenthesis, "regular cast-iron gypsy.")
"Well," he went on, "her face struck me as rather an interesting contrast with a lot of silly mimosa she had in her basket--I hate mimosa; so I was taking peeps at her, not sketching, you understand, when I heard somebody behind me say, 'Well, Mr. Rooke!' and I turned. I jumped rather. It was this Inspector fellow, and he'd a funny sort of expression on his face, not laughing exactly--sort of quizzing--I can't describe it----
"Then he said something that I thought the most infernal neck.
"'You aren't thinking of adopting a flower-woman's baby this time, are you, Mr. Rooke?'
"Damned impudence, wasn't it? Fancy the beggar knowing that!"
Monty was ruffling up at the recollection. I could not resist a smile.
"Chelsea knows that exploit of yours as well as it knows the Albert Bridge, Monty," I assured him. "Go on."
"Well, then he said, 'You'll have to get out of that habit of adopting things, Mr. Rooke. You never know where it ends.'
"'What do you mean?' I said. He _was_ smiling now, but I felt a bit uneasy. We did stuff him up a bit that night, you know. He's a dark horse, that fellow.
"'It doesn't do, Mr. Rooke,' he said. 'Different men take different views of their duty, and you'll be striking one of the other sort one of these days!'
"'I don't know what you mean,' I said. 'Oh yes you do,' says he. 'I'm dashed if I do,' says I. 'Then you're lucky not to be dashed a good deal worse,' says he; 'you take my advice, Mr. Rooke, and stop adopting things, babies or what not. You might burn your fingers. You might--ahem!--blow 'em off'....
"Now what the devil do you think's his game?"
I know of no more exciting mental pleasure than that of finding your _a priori_ guesses taking shape and substance in the realm of actual things. I suppose it is the triumphant cry of your deeper self telling the other self "I told you so!" Remember how little I knew of Inspector Webster, yet with what instinctive reserve I had hedged my impression of him. "A dark horse?" Yes, of quite the darkest kind. I recapitulated the degrees of his darkness. He had come round to Lennox Street that night, probably fresh from his talk with this fellow Westbury; he had put a whole series of questions, but of implications so guarded that in writing that portion of the story I had to itemize and underline what I surmised to be their real purport; and he had instituted a search of Esdaile's premises--twelve hours later! Why twelve hours later? Why not on the spot, there and then? Why give Philip this law, that as a matter of fact he had made use of to drop that pistol into the river?