"And doubtless succeeded admirably," said Vance dryly. "But what I meant was this: did you not anticipate something of the kind happening again in this house, after the other shootings?"
He watched the old butler sharply, but the man's lineaments were as arid as a desert and as indecipherable as an expanse of sea.
"If you will pardon me, sir, for saying so, I don't know precisely what you mean," came the colorless answer. "Had I anticipated that Mr. Chester was to be done in, so to speak, I most certainly would have warned him. It would have been my duty, sir."
"Don't evade my question, Sproot." Vance spoke sternly. "I asked you if you had any idea that a second tragedy might follow the first."
"Tragedies very seldom come singly, sir, if I may be permitted to say so. One never knows what will happen next. I try not to anticipate the workings of fate, but I strive to hold myself in readiness"
"Oh, go away, Sproot—go quite away," said Vance. "When I crave vague rhetoric I'll read Thomas Aquinas."
"Yes, sir." The man bowed with wooden courtesy, and left us.
His footsteps had scarcely died away when Doctor Doremus strode in jauntily.
"There's your bullet, Sergeant." He tossed a tiny cylinder of discolored lead on the drawing-room table. "Nothing but dumb luck. It entered the fifth intercostal space and travelled diagonally across the heart, coming out in the post-axillary fold at the anterior border of the trapezius muscle, where I
