A dark conspiracy seemed to loom up in the background.

"Has it ever occurred to you," I asked, at last, in a very tentative tone, "that perhaps--I throw out the hint as the merest suggestion--perhaps it may have been Sebastian who--" He smiled this time till I thought his smile would swallow him.
"If Yorke-Bannerman had NOT been my client," he mused aloud, "I might have been inclined to suspect rather that Sebastian aided him to avoid justice by giving him something violent to take, if he wished it: something which might accelerate the inevitable action of the heart-disease from which he was suffering.

Isn't THAT more likely ?" I saw there was nothing further to be got out of Mayfield.

His opinion was fixed; he was a placid ruminant.

But he had given me already much food for thought.