“I can see that,” I added, noticing how white and strained his face looked. “I only wanted to ask you—after all, you were the last person to see him—”
“Not the last,” he interrupted, rather hastily. “That man Coffin saw him, you know, gathering the—the wretched fungi—and the carrier saw him later still, after I had left the place.”
“Oh, yes—I didn’t mean quite that. I mean, you were the last friend to see and talk to him intimately.”
“Quite, quite—just so.”
“I wanted to hear from you whether you were, yourself, quite satisfied about it—satisfied that it really was an accident, that is?”
He put the bacon into the pan, where it sputtered a good deal.
“What’s that? I didn’t quite catch.”
“Were you satisfied it was an accident?”
“Why, of course. What else could it have been? You know, Mr. Harrison, I hate to say anything about your father that might seem—to blame him in any way, that is—but, of course, I mean it is a very dangerous thing to experiment with wild fungi. Anybody would tell you the same thing. Unless you are a very great expert—and even then one is liable to make mistakes.”
“That is what is troubling me,” I said. “My father was a very great expert, and he was not at all a man to make mistakes.”
“None of us are infallible.”
“Quite so. But still. And it was odd that it should have happened just at the very time you were away.”