"He'd be a fool if he said aught else." He put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and, followed by the others, strolled into the police-station as if he were dropping in on business of trifling importance.

And there was nothing to be seen there which betokened that a drama of life and death was being constructed in that formal-looking place of neutral-coloured walls, precise furniture, and atmosphere of repression.

Three or four men stood near the superintendent's desk; a policeman was writing slowly and laboriously on a big sheet of blue paper at a side-table, a woman was coaxing a sluggish fire to burn.
"The whole thing's ridiculous!" said a man's scornful voice.

"It shouldn't take five seconds to see that." Brereton instinctively picked out the speaker.

That was Harborough, of course--the tall man who stood facing the others and looking at them as if he wondered how they could be as foolish as he evidently considered them to be.