Page:Fletcher - The Middle Temple Murder (Knopf, 1919).djvu/132

 himself and his companion in a quiet nook in the old tea-house he had told her of, and had given an order for tea and hot tea-cakes to a waitress who evidently knew him. Then he turned to her.

"You want," he said, "to talk to me about your father."

"Yes," she answered. "I do."

"Why?" asked Spargo.

The girl gave him a searching look.

"Ronald Breton says you're the man who's written all those special articles in the Watchman about the Marbury case," she answered. "Are you?"

"I am," said Spargo.

"Then you're a man of great influence," she went on. "You can stir the public mind. Mr. Spargo—what are you going to write about my father and to-day's proceedings?"

Spargo signed to her to pour out the tea which had just arrived. He seized, without ceremony, upon a piece of the hot buttered tea-cake, and bit a great lump out of it.

"Frankly," he mumbled, speaking with his mouth full, "frankly, I don't know. I don't know—yet. But I'll tell you this—it's best to be candid—I shouldn't allow myself to be prejudiced or biassed in making up my conclusions by anything that you may say to me. Understand?"

Jessie Aylmore took a sudden liking to Spargo because of the unconventionality and brusqueness of his manners.

"I'm not wanting to prejudice or bias you," she said.