Furneaux rose at once. Anyone might have believed that he was glad to postpone the proposed examination of the servants.
"That will be splendid," he said with an air of relief that compared markedly with his reticent mood of the past few minutes. "The mere mention of food has given me an appetite. I suppose I am fagged out, or as near it as I have ever been. Moreover, I can tell you everything that any person in these Mansions knows of what took place here between six and eight o'clock last night--a good deal more, by the way, than Clarke has found out, though he scored a point over that stone. Where is it?--in the office, you said. I should like to see it--in the morning."
"You will see more than that. Clarke has arranged to meet the taxicab driver at ten o'clock. He meant to confront him with Rupert Osborne, but we must manage things differently. Of course the man's testimony may be important. Alibi or no alibi, it will be awkward for Osborne if a credible witness swears that he was in this locality for nearly a quarter of an hour about the very time that this poor young lady was killed."
Furneaux, holding the broken cigar under his nose, offered no comment, but, as they entered the hall, he said, glancing at its quaint decoration:
"If opportunity makes the thief, so, I imagine, does it sometimes inspire the murderer. Given the clear moment, the wish, the fury, can't you picture the effect these bizarre surroundings would exercise on a mind already strung to the madness of crime? For every willful slayer of a fellow human being is mad--mad.... Ah, there was the genius of a maniac in the choice of that flint ax to rend Mirabel Armaud's smooth skin--yet she had the right to live--perhaps----"
He stopped; and Winter anew felt that this musing Furneaux of to-day was a different personality from the Furneaux of his intimate knowledge.
And how compellingly strange it was that he should choose to describe Rose de Bercy by the name which she had ceased to bear during many years! Winter dispelled the scent of the joss-sticks by a mighty puff of honest tobacco smoke.
"Oh, come along," he growled, "let us eat--we are both in need of it. The flat is untenanted, of course. Very well, lock the door," he added, addressing the policeman. "Leave the key with the hall-porter, and tell him not to admit anybody, on any pretext whatsoever, until Mr. Furneaux and I come here in the morning."