"He takes more kindly to all. this than I do, I can
tell you."
"It's grist to his mill," said Raffles charitably.
"Exactly! We shall have the whole thing in his next book."
"I hope to have it at the Old Bailey first," remarked Kingsmill, Q.C.
"Refreshing to find a man of letters such a man of action too!"
It was Raffles who said this, and the remark seemed rather trite
for him, but in the tone there was a something that just caught my
private ear. And for once I understood: the officious attitude
of Parrington, without being seriously suspicious in itself, was
admirably calculated to put a previously suspected person in a
grateful shade. This literary adventurer had elbowed Raffles out
of the limelight, and gratitude for the service was what I had
detected in Raffles's voice. No need to say how grateful I felt
myself. But my gratitude was shot with flashes of unwonted insight.
Parrington was one of those who suspected Raffles, or, at all.
events, one who was in the secret of those suspicions. What if he
had traded on the suspect's presence in the house? What if he were
a deep villain himself, and the villain of this particular piece?
I had made up my mind about him, and that in a tithe of the time
I take to make it up as a rule, when we heard my man in the
dressing-room.
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