Out of all this rather mysterious conversation
there did emerge at last a sort of admission that one particular
motor car, of a given description, had stopped before the inn about
an hour before, and that an elderly man had alighted, requiring some
mechanical assistance. Asked if the visitor required any other
assistance, the innkeeper said shortly that the old gentleman had
filled his flask and taken a packet of sandwiches. And with these
words the somewhat inhospitable host had walked hastily out of the
bar, and they heard him banging doors in the dark interior.
Fisher's weary eye wandered round the dusty and dreary inn parlor
and rested dreamily on a glass case containing a stuffed bird, with
a gun hung on hooks above it, which seemed to be its only ornament.
"Puggy was a humorist," he observed, "at least in his own rather
grim style. But it seems rather too grim a joke for a man to buy a
packet of sandwiches when he is just going to commit suicide."
"If you come to that," answered March, "it isn't very usual for a
man to buy a packet of sandwiches when he's just outside the door of
a grand house he's going to stop at."
"No . . . no," repeated Fisher, almost mechanically; and then
suddenly cocked his eye at his interlocutor with a much livelier
expression.
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