"Excellent," said Winter. "In future, devote your energies to legitimate engraving. Good-by!"
He rushed out and leaped into a taxi; within five minutes he was at the door of No. Eleven once more. Let it not be imagined that he had not weighed the possible consequences of thrusting himself in this fashion into Hilton Fenley's private affairs. Although the man had summoned the assistance of Scotland Yard to elucidate the mystery of his father's death, that fact alone could not secure him immunity from the law's all-embracing glance. Winter agreed with Furneaux that the profession of a private banker combined with company promotion is too often a cloak for roguery in the City of London, and the little he knew of the Fenley history did not tend to dissipate a certain nebulous suspicion that their record might not be wholly clean.
The theft of the bonds had been hushed up in a way that savored of unwillingness on Mortimer Fenley's part to permit the police to take action. The man's tragic death might well be a sequel to the robbery, and, granted the impossibility of his elder son having committed the murder, there was nothing fantastic in the notion that he might be a party to it.
Again, Hilton Fenley had deliberately misled Scotland Yard in regard to the seemingly trivial incident of the telephone call. Had he told the truth, and grumbled at the lack of discretion on some woman's part in breaking in on a period of acute distress in the household, Winter's subsequent discovery would have lost its point. As matters stood, however, it was one of a large number of minor circumstances which demanded full examination, and the Superintendent decided that the person really responsible for any seeming excess of zeal on his part should be given an opportunity to clear the air in the place best fitted for the purpose; namely, the address from which the call emanated.
Therefore, when the door was opened again by Mrs. Garth, she found that the Napoleonic tactics of an earlier hour were no longer practicable, for the enemy instantly occupied the terrain by leaning inward.
"I want to see Mr. Hilton Fenley," he said suavely. "You know my name already, Mrs. Garth, so I need not repeat it."