To Love and Perish. Ernest Dudley

smile looked as if someone had stuck it on.

      Vane sat down in the leather-backed chair as casually as he could make it look. ‘It’s as simple as this,’ he said. ‘You may be in dead trouble and if you are you could need a little legal help.’ Merrill didn’t say anything and Vane went on. ‘However trivial you may think this case is—’

      ‘Case?’

      ‘However cockeyed it may look from where you’re sitting, I am sure you’ll agree that a good lawyer never does any harm.’

      There was silence for a few minutes while Merrill reflected about it. Vane took in the office a bit more. It seemed a little shabbier than it had been when he first came in; shadows seemed to have dusted the corners. Merrill stirred at his desk and he leant forward.

      ‘What,’ he said, ‘do you want out of this?’

      Vane put him in the picture, as much as he needed to be in it to keep him happy. At the end of it Vane gave him the bit about he might be wasting his time. ‘The Scotland Yard dicks may be off back to the smoke this very minute, convinced they have got nothing to go on. I hope they have, for your sake.’

      ‘I hope so, too,’ Merrill said. ‘All the same, I think you and I are in business.’