Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/106

Rh Lomas dropped his eyeglass. "Ah! Well, well. Things must be as they may, what? It's a pity. Afraid you've made a bad break this time, Fortune. It's a straight case."

"I wonder," Reggie said.

"My dear fellow, I'd hate you to be at a disadvantage." Lomas seemed suddenly to have become older, paternal, protective. "Well—it's not strictly official—but I may tell you we've found the pistol. It was in Cranford's rooms."

"A Smith-Southron •38? Fancy! I don't suppose there's more than half a million of them in circulation. It's a good gun. I've got one myself somewhere."

"My dear fellow!" Lomas was young and jaunty again. "Why try to bluff me? Lunt was killed by a particular kind of pistol. And we find the particular man to whom all suspicion points owns one of these pistols. It's quite simple, don't you know?"

"Yes, oh, yes, 'Doosid lucid, doosid convincing.' But I wonder why you want to convince me?"

That was the first skirmish over the Lunt case, and Reggie, Gerald Barnes discreetly excusing himself, ate a little tête-à-tête lunch with Radnor Hall—not in the silver panelled dining-room. When the servants were gone, "I don't want to hear anything under false pretences, Mr. Hall," Reggie explained. "I shall act in this case for Cranford."