Status Updates From Cut Throat: A Ludovic Trave...

There was something horrible about it, like overhearing the conversation of a lunatic whom one had once known as a friend; ravings repeated over and over again as if they beat on the brain.

What do we know?” He put the question with disconcerting suddenness.
“Depends what you’re assuming,” said Norris guardedly. “Are you taking it that the man with the hamper was the one who killed him?”
“I think so.”
“Very good, sir! Then we know he was a man of intelligence; sufficiently aware of facts and sufficiently cultured to be able to put that bluff across Lord Zyon and his secretary. He was absolutely callous”

Only a maniac, thought Wharton, would deliberately encourage into argument, and exposition especially, the man who held the wheel of a car that was doing anything up to eighty in the straight.

Chapter IV