standards, she was rich.
' 'Then she ought to be used to it,'' Gillivray replied, oblivious of Pitt's thoughts.
'I daresay she is.' Pitt dug himself deeper into his feelings, glad to have the excuse to let go of the bridle he kept on them most of the time. 'That hardly stops it hurting! She's probably used to being hungry, and used to being cold, and used to being scared half the time she's conscious at all. And probably she deceives herself as to what her rooms are used for and dreams that she's better than she is: wiser, kinder, prettier, and more important-like the rest of humanity! Maybe all she wanted was for us to lend her a little fame for a day or two, give her something to talk about over the teacups-or the gin-so she convinced herself Jerome rented one of her rooms. What do
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you suggest we do-prosecute her because she was mistaken?' He let all his dislike for Gillivray and his comfortable assumptions thicken his voice with scorn. 'Apart from anything else, that would hardly be conducive to having other people come forward to help us-now, would it?'
Gillivray looked at him, his face full of hurt.
'I think you are being quite unreasonable, sir,' he said stiffly. 'I can see that for myself. It does not alter the fact that she wasted our time!'
And so did the third claimant, who came to the police station saying he had let rooms to Jerome. He was a rotund personage with rippling jowls and thick white hair. He kept a public house in the Mile End Road, and said that a gentleman answering the murderer's description to a tee had rented rooms from him on numerous occasions, rooms immediately above his saloon bar. He had seemed perfectly respectable at the time, soberly dressed and well spoken, and had been visited while there by a young gentleman of good breeding.
But he also failed to identify Jerome among a group of photographs presented to him, and when he was questioned closely by Pitt, his answers became vaguer and vaguer, until finally he retreated altogether and said he thought after all that he had been mistaken. When he considered the matter more carefully, Pitt helped to bring back to mind that the gentleman in question had a North Country accent, had been a little on the portly side, and was definitely bald over the major portion of his head.
'Damn!' Gillivray swore as soon as he was out of the room. 'Now he really
'Most sorts,' Pitt said with disgust. 'If he spreads it around, he'll probably double his custom.'
'Then we ought to prosecute him!'
'What for? The worst we could do is give him a fright-and waste a great deal more time, not only ours but the court'sjis well. He'd get off-and become a folk hero! He'd be carried
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down the Mile End Road shoulder high, and his pub would be crammed to the doors! He'd be able to sell tickets!'
Gillivray slammed his notebook down on the table, speechless because he did not wish to be vulgar and use the only words that sprang to his mind.
Pitt smiled to himself, and allowed Gillivray to see it.
The investigation continued. It was now October and the streets were hard and bright, full of the edge of autumn. Cold winds penetrated coats, and the first frost made the pavements slippery under one's boots. They had traced Jerome's career back through his previous employers, all of whom had found him of excellent scholastic ability. If admitting to no great personal liking for him, all felt definite satisfaction with his work. None of them had had the least notion that his personal life was anything but of the most regular-even, one might almost say, prim. Certainly he appeared to be a man of little imagination and no humor at all, except of the most perverse, which they failed to understand. As they had said: not likable, but of the utmost propriety-to the point of being a prig-and socially an unutterable bore.
On October 5, Gillivray came into Pitt's office without knocking, his cheeks flushed either with success or by the sharpening wind outside.
