Page:Fletcher - The Middle Temple Murder (Knopf, 1919).djvu/52



The barrister and the journalist, left thus unceremoniously on a crowded pavement, looked at each other. Breton laughed.

"We don't seem to have gained much information," he remarked. "I'm about as wise as ever."

"No—wiser," said Spargo. "At any rate, I am. I know now that this dead man called himself John Marbury; that he came from Australia; that he only landed at Southampton yesterday morning, and that he was in the company last night of a man whom we have had described to us—a tall, grey-bearded, well-dressed man, presumably a gentleman."

Breton shrugged his shoulders.

"I should say that description would fit a hundred thousand men in London," he remarked.

"Exactly—so it would," answered Spargo. "But we know that it was one of the hundred thousand, or half-million, if you like. The thing is to find that one—the one."

"And you think you can do it?"

"I think I'm going to have a big try at it."

Breton shrugged his shoulders again. 44