At eight o'clock on that night the soft-footed and soft-voiced
detective presented himself at Calton's office. He found the lawyer
impatiently waiting for him. Kilsip closed the door softly, and then
taking a seat opposite to Calton, waited for him to speak. The lawyer,
however, first handed him a cigar, and then producing a bottle of
whisky and two glasses from some mysterious recess, he filled one and
pushed it towards the detective. Kilsip accepted these little
attentions with the utmost gravity, yet they were not without their
effect on him, as the keen-eyed lawyer saw. Calton was a great believer
in diplomacy, and never lost an opportunity of inculcating it into
young men starting in life. "Diplomacy," said Calton, to one young
aspirant for legal honours, "is the oil we cast on the troubled waters
of social, professional, and political life; and if you can, by a
little tact, manage mankind, you are pretty certain to get on in this
world."
Calton was a man who practised what he preached. He believed Kilsip to
have that feline nature, which likes to be stroked, to be made much of,
and he paid him these little attentions, knowing full well they would
bear their fruit. He also knew that Kilsip entertained no friendly
feeling for Gorby, that, in fact, he bore him hatred, and he determined
that this feeling which existed between the two men, should serve him
to the end he had in view.
"I suppose," he said, leaning back in his chair, and watching the
wreaths of blue smoke curling from his cigar, "I suppose you know all
the ins and the outs of the hansom cab murder?"
"I should rather think so," said Kilsip, with a curious light in his
queer eyes. "Why, Gorby does nothing but brag about it, and his
smartness in catching the supposed murderer!"
"Aha!" said Calton, leaning forward, and putting his arms on the table.
"Supposed murderer. Eh! Does that mean that he hasn't been convicted by
a jury, or that you think that Fitzgerald is innocent?"
Kilsip stared hard at the lawyer, in a vague kind of way, slowly
rubbing his hands together.
"Well," he said at length, in a deliberate manner, "before I got your
note, I was convinced Gorby had got hold of the right man, but when I
heard that you wanted to see me, and knowing you are defending the
prisoner, I guessed that you must have found something in his favour
which you wanted me to look after."
"Right!" said Calton, laconically.
"As Mr. Fitzgerald said he met Whyte at the corner and hailed the
cab--" went on the detective.
"How do you know that?" interrupted Calton, sharply.
"Gorby told me."
"How the devil did he find out?" cried the lawyer, with genuine
surprise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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