"Brown paper's scarce," he said. "I've used this piece four times already. And I undo all the knots in my string too. Well, which way are you going?"
We left the office and, barely a hundred yards away, turned into the Temple. Presently he resumed our previous conversation by asking me what I thought of his guess; and I told him. I told him also my difficulty about what his own engagement had to do with this.
"Do with it?" he repeated as we began to pace backward and forward along King's Bench Walk. "It's a good deal to do with it--if that about Smith's right, of course. You see, you hardly know Dawdy. She thinks you don't like her very much----"
"Then I hope you'll take the first opportunity----" I began hurriedly, but he waved his hand.
"Oh, don't you worry about it. I don't suppose she means it. And whether she does or not it seems to me this is exactly where I come in."
"Then you see more than I do," I remarked.
"Don't you? I mean her taking sudden fancies of that kind. I'm not superstitious myself--silly I call it--but she's a mass of it. Theatrical people are, I've heard, and anyway she is. I think that beast Cunningham started her off. When she used to sit up at night waiting for him to come home she used to do all sorts of stupid things--sit there counting slowly, and if he didn't come before she counted a hundred he wouldn't come at all--counting the taxis that passed too--watching the clock--beastly. Filthy time she had. I hope I'm somewhere near that brute at the Resurrection."
Presently he swallowed his anger and continued.
"Well, about when Philip offered us that studio, that accident happened, and everything was at sixes and sevens. Philip began it, stopping all that time in the cellar and behaving like a lunatic when he did come up. What his game was--well, you can search me. So first Philip starts playing the goat, and then there was all that fuss about Mrs. Esdaile going away, and Philip staying on day after day, always saying he was going and everything was perfectly all right but never budging an inch, mind you. Well, it began to get on Dawdy's nerves. And I began to catch it too. She said _I'd_ something up my sleeve as well, and of course I had, about that pistol. And then there was that time when we took her wardrobe down into the cellar."