“I thank you, my friend. The word exact, you are zealous for it. Eh bien , what about our friend Parker now? With twenty thousand pounds in hand, would he have continued being a butler? Je ne pense pas. It is, of course, possible that he banked the money under another name, but I am disposed to believe he spoke the truth to us. If he is a scoundrel, he is a scoundrel on a mean scale. He has not the big ideas. That leaves us as a possibility, Raymond, or⁠—well⁠—Major Blunt.”

“Surely not Raymond,” I objected. “Since we know that he was desperately hard up for a matter of five hundred pounds.”

“That is what he says, yes.”

“And as to Hector Blunt⁠—”