You'd fill the
bill for a few weeks, and then snuff out with a flourish of
extra-specials; you wouldn't rust with a vile repose for seven or
fourteen years."
"Good old Raffles!" I chuckled. "I begin to forgive you for
being in bad form at dinner."
"But I was never more earnest in my life."
"Go on!"
"I mean it."
"You know very well that you wouldn't commit a murder, whatever
else you might do."
"I know very well I'm going to commit one to-night!"
He had been leaning back in the saddle-bag chair, watching me
with keen eyes sheathed by languid lids; now he started forward,
and his eyes leapt to mine like cold steel from the scabbard.
They struck home to my slow wits; their meaning was no longer in
doubt. I, who knew the man, read murder in his clenched hands,
and murder in his locked lips, but a hundred murders in those
hard blue eyes.
"Baird?" I faltered, moistening my lips with my tongue.
"Of course."
"But you said it didn't matter about the room in Chelsea?"
"I told a lie."
"Anyway you gave him the slip afterwards!"
"That was another. I didn't. I thought I had when I came up to
you this evening; but when I looked out of your window--you
remember? to make assurance doubly sure--there he was on the
opposite pavement down below."
"And you never said a word about it!"
"I wasn't going to spoil your dinner, Bunny, and I wasn't going
to let you spoil mine.
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