privacy of the supper-room--we had the place to ourselves--I should not
talk to Hughes. I had never before that afternoon met any of the Jervaise
family except Frank, and on one or two occasions his younger brother who
was in the army and, now, in India; and I thought that this was an
appropriate occasion to improve my knowledge. I understood that Hughes was
an old friend of the family.

He may have been, although the fact did not appear in his conversation;
for I discovered almost immediately that he was, either by nature or by
reason of his legal training, cursed with a procrastinating gift of
diplomacy.

"Awkward affair!" I began as soon as we had got our whiskies and lighted
cigarettes.

Hughes drank with a careful slowness, put his glass down with superfluous
accuracy, and then after another instant of tremendous deliberation, said,
"What is?"

"Well, this," I returned gravely.

"Meaning?" he asked judicially.

"Of course it may be too soon to draw an inference," I said.

"Especially with no facts to draw them from," he added.

"All the same," I went on boldly, "it looks horribly suspicious."

"What does?"