“How can you be so unkind, Lomas? I keep telling you I don’t know anything. I come and shout it in your ear. I don’t know the thing that really matters. Who was Kimball? Who is Sandford? What is he that Kimball couldn’t bear him? I said that at the beginning. I say it now in italics. Good Lord, you can hear Kimball laughing at us!”
“Don’t be uncanny.”
“Well, I’m not really sure he is laughing at us. Wait a while. But why did Kimball try murder last instead of first? Oh, that’s easy. He was an epicure in hate! He didn’t want mere blood. He wanted the beggar to suffer—to be ruined, not just dead. Hence he went to break Sandford. Then Rand-Mason complicated the affair. Kimball had a murder on his back and I scared him. He thought we had enough to convict him or that we’d get it. He said to himself, ‘I’m for it, anyway. I’ll have to die. Well, why shouldn’t my death hang Sandford?’ And he played that last card.”
“I suppose so,” Lomas agreed. “In a way it’s all quite rational, isn’t it?”
“I always said it would be. Grant that it was worth anything to ruin Sandford and Kimball’s a most efficient fellow. But why was it worth anything to ruin Sandford?”
“Ah, God knows,” said Lomas gravely.
“Yes. I wonder if Jane Brown does.” He handed Lomas a letter.
“Dear Sir,—Your advertisement for information about Mrs. Ellen Edith Sandford. I have some which is at your service if you can satisfy me why you want it.—Yours truly, Jane Brown.”
“I should say Jane is a character,” said Lomas.
“Yes, she allured me. I told her who I was and she said she’d come to tea.”
She kept her appointment. Reggie found himself facing a large young woman. In her construction nature had been very happy. She had decorated its work with admirable art. She was physically in the grand style, but she had a merry eye, and her clothes were not only charming but of a sophisticated elegance.
Reggie, there is no doubt, stared at her for a moment and a half. “Miss—Jane—Brown,” he said slowly.
“I haven’t brought my godfathers and godmothers, Mr. Fortune,” she smiled. “But I am Jane Brown really. I always felt I couldn’t live up to it. I see you know me.”
“If seeing were knowing, I should know Miss Joan Amber very well. It’s delightful to be able to thank her for the real Rosalind—all the Rosalind there is.”
She made him a curtsy. “I’m lucky. I didn’t think you’d be like this. I expected an old man with glasses and—”
“This,” said Reggie maliciously—“this is the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department—Mr. Lomas.”
Lomas let his eyeglass fall. “I also am young enough to go to the theatre. I shall go on being young so long as Miss Amber is acting.”
“May I sit down?” said she pathetically. “You’re rather overwhelming. I thought it would be terrific and severe and suspicious. But you know you are bland—simply bland.”
“This is your fault, Lomas,” said Reggie severely. “I have often been called flippant and even futile, but never bland before—never bland.”
“It is a tribute to your maturity, my dear Fortune.”
Her golden eyes sent a glance at Reggie. “Mature!” she said. “I suppose you are real? Oh, let’s be serious. I am Jane Brown, you know. Amber—of course I had to have another name for the stage—Amber because of my hair.” She touched it.
“And your eyes,” said Reggie.
“Never mind,” said she, with another glance, but the gaiety had gone out of them. “My father was a doctor in Liverpool. He is worth twenty thousand of me, and he never made enough to live on. A poor middle-class practice, the work wore him out by the time he was fifty, and now he’s an invalid in Devonshire. He can’t walk upstairs even—heart, you know. And he simply pines to work. Oh, I know this doesn’t matter to you, but I can’t forget it. If only people were paid what they’re worth! I beg your pardon. This isn’t businesslike. Well, he was the doctor the Kimball family went to. Old Mr. Kimball was a clerk, and the son, the man who was drowned the other day, began like that too. The old people died about the time young Mr. Kimball and his sister grew up. She kept house for her brother. He began as a broker and got on. In a way—my father always says that—in a way he was devoted to her. Nothing he could pay for was too good for her. He always wanted her with him. But he made awful demands on her. She mustn’t have any interests of her own. She mustn’t make any friends. Like some men are with their wives, you know. Horrible, isn’t it?” She turned upon Reggie.
“Common form of selfishness. Passing into mania. Not only male, you know. Some mothers are like that.”
“Yes, I know they are. But it’s worst with men and their wives.”
“The wife can’t grow up. The children can,” Reggie agreed.
“It is exactly that,” said she eagerly. “You understand. Oh, well, this isn’t businesslike either. Ellen Kimball fell in love. He was just an ordinary sort of man, a clerk of some sort—Sandford was his name. Horace Kimball was furious. My father says Sandford was nothing in particular. There was no special reason why she should marry him or why she shouldn’t. He was insignificant.”
“Heredity.” Reggie nodded to Lomas.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your father understood men. Miss Amber.”
“Indeed he does. Of course Horace Kimball did the absurd thing, said she mustn’t marry, abused Sandford, and so on, and of course that made her marry. Unfortunately—this really seems to be the only thing against her—unfortunately she was married in a sly, secret sort of way. She didn’t tell her brother she’d made up her mind, or when the marriage was to be or anything. She simply slunk
