Wendover awoke from his thoughts to find Sir Clinton looking at him with an expressionless face. “Care to step off here, squire? Your face gives you away. You don't like the way things are trending? Better leave us to finish the job alone.” Wendover's brain could work swiftly when he chose. Almost in a moment he had gauged the situation. If he dropped out, then the two officials would go forward together and there would be no human feelings among the hunters. If he stayed with them, he could at least play the part of critic and shake the inspector's confidence in any weak links of the chain which he was forging. Further than that he could not go, but at least he could hold a watching brief for Cressida. His mind was made up at once. “No,” he answered. “If you don't mind, since I'm in the thing now, I'll stay in. You may need an impartial witness again, and I may as well have the job.” The inspector made no attempt to conceal his disgust. Sir Clinton showed neither approval nor objection, but he evidently thought it right to give a warning. “Very well, squire. It's your own choice. But, remember, you're only a witness. You're not to go putting your oar in when it's not wanted.” Wendover indicated his acquiescence by a curt nod. Sir Clinton restarted his car and drove along with his eyes fixed on the clearly marked tracks of the non-skid tyres. At the hotel entrance the studded print turned inward, and was lost on the gravel of the sweep up to the hotel. As he noticed this, the inspector made an involuntary gesture of satisfaction, whilst Wendover felt that the net had been drawn yet tighter by this last piece of evidence. “That's a clincher, sir,” Armadale pointed out with a frank satisfaction which irritated Wendover intensely. “She took a car down and back. This is going to be as easy as falling off a log.” “I suppose you noticed that that car never stopped at all on the road home,” Sir Clinton remarked casually. “The tracks showed no sign of a stop and a restart once the machine had got going.” Only after he had run his car into the hotel garage did he speak again. “We don't want any more chatter than we can help at present, inspector. There's no real case against anyone yet; and it won't do to rush into the limelight. I suggest that Mr. Wendover should ask to see Mrs. Fleetwood. If you inquired for her, every tongue in the place would be at work in five minutes; and by the time they'd compared notes with each other, it'll be quite impossible to dig out anything that one or two of them may really happen to know. Everything will have got mixed up in their minds, and they won't remember whether they saw something themselves or merely heard about it from someone else.” Wendover saw the force of the argument; but he also realised clearly the position into which he was being pushed. “I'm not so sure I care about that job, Clinton,” he protested. “It puts me in a false position.” The chief constable interrupted him brutally.