Jolly kept a rigidly straight face except for the movement of his lips.

“It is your imagination, sir.”

Rollison eyed him thoughtfully, and then said: “Oh, is it? For that you may spend today looking out the newspapers of the—what date is it?”

“May the seventeenth, sir.”

“May the seventeenth of each of the last twenty-one years. We’ll have the Globe, the Wire, the Sun-Record and The Times, just to get a balanced view, and we shall count the number of new crimes reported on each day of each year. You may go to the newspaper offices in person.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Jolly. “Would you like more coffee?”

“Please.”

Jolly poured.

“Will you excuse me now, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, sir. May I ask whether you have read this morning’s newspapers?”

This time, Rollison was silently speculative for a long time. So far neither master nor man had allowed himself to smile, each remaining quite poker-faced. Whenever they played a game like this, it was seldom that either relaxed. Rollison studied Jolly, with the sorrowful-looking brown eyes, the rather wrinkled skin, the scragginess under the chin which suggested that he had once been fat but had recently wasted away. Jolly’s lips were sensitive, and although there was a kind of dyspeptic look about him, his was a face that most people liked.

“Yes,” said Rollison at last. “I have perused the newspapers.”

“Did you observe the name of the employer of the man, Jones?”

Slowly and as if painfully, Rollison said: “No.”

“I imagined that had escaped your notice,” said Jolly, magnificently bland. “In the Globe, sir, it states that Jones worked for Jepsons. Possibly only the Globe carried that piece of information, because Jepsons own many shares in the Globe.”