Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/133

"You are always too hasty in leaping to conclusions. You were doing a great deal of good by sitting up in the room opposite. You were convincing the mysterious gentleman that I expected him to come through the door. And it was that conviction which emboldened him to pay you a visit last night. I am sorry to have practised any deception on you two, but really it was the only means that occurred to me for inducing the gentleman behind the scenes to act as he did. And after all, I only made you sit up for an hour."

"An hour," said Gordon, "cannot be properly measured by the movements of a clock, an inanimate thing which registers time but doesn't feel it. Many things lengthen time; but three things above all, darkness, silence, and not smoking. The watch we kept last night was a fair equivalent for three hours over a fire with a pipe."

"Well, I apologize. But you will be glad to hear that the experiment succeeded. Somebody did come into your room last night, Reeves, and wandered all over it, though of course he found nothing that was of the slightest interest to him, because there was nothing to find."

"And how do you know all this?"

"That is where the chewing-gum comes in. Seccotine would have done: but chewing-gum is more certain. I do not profess to understand why people chew: my impression is that it is merely a kind of fidgeting. Those people who talk about the unconscious would probably tell you that all fidgeting is