Henry smiled. “I didn’t know him at all, Inspector,” he said. “He may have had hundreds of enemies in his private life, for all I know. All that I can tell you is that he was pretty cordially hated in the world of literary research.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious enough?”

“I don’t think it is. Explain yourself, my dear fellow.” Shelley’s temper was even enough, but he was beginning to find the little man’s finicky correctness more than a little trying.

“When a man reaches the position of being a leading authority on any subject,” Henry explained patiently, “he cannot say much on the subject of his speciality without treading on someone’s corns. You see?”

Shelley nodded. “I see,” he said. “And you think that Arnell may have been murdered by someone who loathed him because he had a bit of a nasty temper in matters of literary research and so on.”

“Oh, no!” Henry pushed the idea away from him, horror expressed in every line of his meek little face. “I did not suggest anything of the sort, Inspector. I did not mean you to infer anything at all like that. Please don’t read into my words more than I say.”

“Right ho, Mr. Fairhurst,” Shelley agreed with heavy joviality. “And who were the other experts in this business of the lesser Elizabethan dramatists—which, I think you said, was Arnell’s speciality?”

“That’s not easy to say,” answered Henry, seeing only too clearly whither this cross-examination was leading, and mentally viewing himself as the principal witness for the crown in a case against one University Professor for the murder of another one. “You might ask,” he went on, unhappily, “Professor Wilkinson of Northfield University, and Dr. Crocker, who is, I think, in some sort of official position, of Oxford—as far as I know, they were the only two who knew much about the work which Arnell had done—I’ve heard them discussing things together at meetings of learned societies, and so on, which I have occasionally attended.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fairhurst,” said Shelley appreciatively. “You have been very useful to us. If you will hold yourself in readiness for the inquest, I think that we have finished with you for the moment.”

“But don’t you…don’t you…” Henry stuttered and dithered in his eagerness to get the question out.

“Don’t we what?” asked Shelley ungrammatically.

“Don’t you want to hear how he died?”

“We know that,” answered the detective with a smile. “He apparently went off to sleep, breathed stertorously for a few minutes—possibly so loudly as to seem to be snoring—and then collapsed.”

“But how do you know?” asked Henry.

Shelley smiled again. “We have our methods, Mr. Fairhurst,” he said. There was no doubt that Inspector Shelley could on occasion be a very trying man.