CHAPTER 17Mr. Pinkerton sat in the bright splendour of the Oxford Corner House, his clothes done up in a neat newspaper-wrapped parcel, feeling very small, lonely and insignificant in spite of his beard. He was most wretched, for a terrible thought had struck him all of a sudden while he had been at the telephone, and the more he considered it the more logical and irrefutable it appeared. Bull probably was at Scotland Yard, Mr. Pinkerton had decided; but they were saying he wasn’t there because he had left word he was in no circumstances to be bothered by Mr. Pinkerton. In all the years he had known Inspector Bull he had never called him twice in succession and found him out. The same was true of Sir Charles Debenham. Mr. Pinkerton had gleaned the papers painstakingly for some reference to
