J. S. Fletcher

“ Nobody would notice—in that crush."
"Who should want to carry it off?" asked Blick with asperity.
Summers, who had been assisting in the search, suddenly chuckled.
"There's one man in existence who'd have been jolly glad to carry it off!" he exclaimed.
Blick looked up, frowning.
"What do you mean?" he snapped out. "Who?—what man?"
"The man who left it on the supper-table at the Sceptre, of course!" retorted Summers, with another chuckle. "How do you know he wasn't there amongst the deeply-interested audience? May have been!" ”

“ My men have already made the most exhaustive enquiries at every railroad station in the neighbourhood, and we've got hold of—nothing!"
"Strangers, too!" said Walkinshaw.
"How do we know that?" demanded Chilford.
"There are a tidy lot of men within an area of twenty miles who might have business dealings with Guy Markenmore. His business here that night might have been just as much with those two men as with his brother and sister. Probably it was."
"Grimsdale asserts that the first man was an American," remarked Walkinshaw. "We haven't a plenitude of Americans in residence about here. ”

“ I'm quite certain—in my own mind—that John Harborough is as innocent as I am, and I'm not much less certain that the two men who were with Guy at the Sceptre are also innocent. The probability is that those men will be heard of—they'll come forward. You'll find that the meeting at the Sceptre—an odd one, if you like!—was nothing but a business meeting. No—we've got nowhere yet! As I say, if Blick there wants to do some ferret-work, he's got to go back and start in London. How do we know what Guy Markenmore's affairs were? ”