Also, when he saw how Inspector Val looked forward to the capture of Storri in the midst of crime, the strain of expectation made silence the natural thing.

It took Inspector Val's sudden yet decisive assertion that Storri was dead, to provoke the first word.
Storri's death instantly overshadowed all else in the thoughts of Richard.
"Storri dead!" he exclaimed, making as though he would enter London Bill's tunnel, from which Inspector Val had crawled to make his grim announcement.
"Dead as Nero!" returned Inspector Val.

"But not there--not in the tunnel!" "Where then ?" asked Richard.
"In Grant Place.

You recall the San Reve ?--she who wrote the letter about those French shares?
Both Storri and she are dead in Grant Place, or I'm not an Inspector of Police." Richard was for going to Grant Place, but Inspector Val detained him.
"There's no hurry," he said.

"Any discoveries to be made in Grant Place will wait.