He dropped his voice. "Well, you see, this fellow Smith waved his hand the way I told you--like this----" On the bus top he made that same aimless and wavering movement of his hand that I had seen him make in Esdaile's studio, that I had seen Mr. Harry Westbury make in the Chelsea public-house. "I think now he wanted the pistol back again, but of course I didn't give it him."
"Might have wanted to shoot himself," Monty replied.
I pondered deeply, my eyes on the passing façade of the Ritz. Certainly Monty, as the first on the scene that morning that now seemed such ages ago, had the right to collate his original observations with anything he might subsequently have learned, and the resulting conclusion would probably be a strong one. But that Chummy had possibly wished to shoot himself was no explanation of why he had shot Maxwell. Indeed, another explanation was far more probable. Having realized that he had in fact shot him he might merely have wished to take the shortest way out himself, and I drew Monty's attention to this.
"I'm coming to that," Monty answered. "You see this fellow Wetherhead is a jolly interesting chap. You remember the July push on the Somme? Well, he was in that--Bristol Fighter--and then he went up the line to Wipers. He told me that one time when they were in Pop--Poperinghe that is, you know, and we'd a lot of heavy guns there----" (but I think I may safely omit the rather lengthy second-hand recital of Wetherhead's movements and experiences). "Extraordinary yarns he has to tell. Did you know that a first-class pilot can drive another one down with the wash of his propeller? He can, Wetherhead says. He gets above him, and maneuvers for position, and then--I forget exactly how Wetherhead put it, but he showed me with a couple of models they have there----"
"Yes, yes, but you were going to say----"
"So I was; I know I'm rambling a bit, but it's awfully interesting, and you must meet Wetherhead. Well, when he was with the infantry (Northwold Fusiliers) he says quite a number of their fellows used to carry little doses of poison about with them, just in case. He'd heard awful yarns of the way some of these Boches used to treat their prisoners. So they had this poison to be ready for anything, like Whitaker Wright with his cigar."