I had a sudden most embarrassing picture of that large figure in the buckaroo costume, stony-visaged and fishy-eyed, in my bathroom. I should imagine—to say the least—that it’s not at all military to shower bath powder and towels around the way I do.
Sergeant Buck stood motionless and frozen-faced by the door, not bothering to give any sign of corroboration. Obviously his colonel’s word needed no bush . . . though the figure is certainly not very apt unless there’s some particularly thorny and rock-ribbed shrub that I don’t know about.
“And where did you get them, Mrs. Latham?” Hogan asked quietly.
I swallowed.
“I took them out of Cromwell’s hand, on the steering wheel of the car, when Colonel Primrose went to call you,” I said.
“Did they come out easily?”
I was more bewildered than
