“Some students say women have no minds,” Lomas murmured drowsily. “But that’s partiality. The trouble is, women aren’t human beings. Consider the parallel case of the dog. He is intelligent. But he sets different values on things from our values. Inhuman values. Think of bones, cats, boots. It is so also with women.”
“ ‘I love a lassie’—but she ate my best pumps. Lomas, my good child, are you merely drivelling or shall we come to something soon?”
“I am much exposed to women,” said the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department pathetically, and roused himself. “But this is a family skeleton. I have a sister, Fortune. She is intelligent. She is almost as omniscient as you, my dear fellow, and much more practical. But she can be quite maddening. She is maddening me now. Unfortunately she has no husband. She had too much intelligence. She owns a princely school at Tormouth. I believe it makes her as rich as Rockefeller. She certainly does herself very well. A month ago she wrote to me that a strange thing had happened. In the night one of the mistress’s rooms had been turned upside down.”
“Do they rag much at girls’ schools?” Reggie yawned. “It might be picturesque.”
“My wonderful sister wanted me to tell her what it meant. I’m not proud, Fortune. I know my limitations. I did not see myself in a girls’ school. Especially as an official. Now she has been writing to me that there are extraordinary developments. The room of another mistress has been upset.”
“They do rag in girls’ schools! Another advance of women. Oh, they’ll have the vote soon.”
“You show levity, Fortune. My sister would not like it. This is a crime. A number of photographs were taken—photographs of girls at the school. And there is no clue to the criminal.”
“The great Tormouth mystery. Leader in the Daily Scream—‘Brains for Scotland Yard.’ But the independent expert found a pink hairpin in the mouth of the dachshund next door but two and brought the foul deed home to the junior curate.”
“I envy your spirits, Fortune,” Lomas sighed. “You have no sister—no maiden sister.”
And the desultory conversation turned feebly to something else. In fact, both men were feeling the strain of that tangled and squalid crime, the Pimlico murder. They had at last contrived to hang (you remember it) the reluctant borough councillor; but only Reggie Fortune could take a holiday. As he was going, he said that he thought of motoring in Devonshire.
“You’d better call on my sister and investigate her case.” Lomas smiled sourly. “If it is a case. Sometimes I think it’s a dream.”
“Ragging in Girls’ Schools. By our Special Commission. ’Orrible Revelations.”
Lomas shook his head. “I’m afraid my sister won’t take to you. She’s not flippant.”
“Lomas, don’t be improper. A flippant headmistress. I blush.”
A few days later Reggie Fortune drove into Tormouth, liked it, liked its hotel, and called on the Hon. Evelyn Lomas. Miss Lomas was her brother’s sister in face and shape, correctly handsome, slight, dapper, not the least like her brother in manner. She was frankly middle-aged, brisk and direct.
“So glad you could spare time, Mr. Fortune.” She sat down to her writing-table. “My brother tells me I can have every confidence in your discretion.”
“So good of him,” Reggie murmured. He was annoyed with Lomas. He had meant only to make friends with the good lady. It appeared that he was to be an official investigator of the silly girls’ school mystery. An embarrassing position. And Miss Lomas was visibly without humour.
“You will understand that discretion is essential in this case, Mr. Fortune. Anything in the nature of publicity would be unpardonable. You look very young.”
“I try to be,” Reggie said modestly.
Miss Lomas coughed. “These are the facts, Mr. Fortune.”
With minute and tiresome detail Reggie heard it all over again and learnt nothing new. One mistress’s room turned upside down in the night, nothing spoilt or taken—an interval—another mistress’s room turned upside down and a number of photographs of girls taken. Only that and nothing more. Reggie was bored, and let his eyes wander from the intensity of Miss Lomas. When at last she stopped, frowning at his lack of attention, and waited in angry majesty for him to say something—
“Are you interested in archaeology?” was what he said.
“I beg your pardon,” said Miss Lomas, in an awful voice.
“I was wonderin’ about this,” Reggie murmured, and took up from her table a little yellowish thing modelled into something like the shape of a woman. “Fascinatin’, isn’t she?”
“It seems to me childish or disgusting, Mr. Fortune,” Miss Lomas snapped at him. “It has nothing to do with the case. But I am afraid my affairs merely amuse you, Mr. Fortune.”
“Oh, please, please,” Reggie protested. “You see, you’re so lucid, Miss Lomas. These odd affairs are hardly ever lucid. Anything may have to do with anything. Just consider. You tell me that in your school there has been happening something unusual.”
“Extraordinary, unprecedented, and disturbing,” Miss Lomas cried.
“And then I find this lyin’ about—a Hottentot Venus in a girls’ school—that’s very highly unusual.”
“The thing is just a little ivory idol,” said Miss Lomas and took it from him and looked at it with disgust. It was crudely and oddly shaped, like a child’s modelling.
“It’s not ivory, and probably it wasn’t an idol,” Reggie snapped. His excellent temper found Miss Lomas trying. “It’s a horse’s tooth, and was no doubt carved as a doll or a work of art. But how did it come into a girls’ school?”
“I quite agree that it is most unsuitable. I should myself call it indecent. That is why I keep it on my desk.” (Reggie mastered a smile.) “It was found recently in the library. No doubt one of the girls having relations in India or Africa was given the thing as an odd savage trinket. She lost it and, recognizing that it was an undesirable thing, is afraid to claim it.
