“Pardon me, Mrs. Storr,” he said, and she turned and stared at the foreign-looking man suspiciously.
“If you are a reporter—” she began.
“I’m not,” smiled Manfred, “nor am I a friend of your husband’s, though I thought of lying to you in that respect in order to find an excuse for talking to you.”
His frankness procured her interest.
“I do not wish to talk about poor Jeffrey’s terrible trouble,” she said. “I just want to be alone.”
Manfred nodded.
“I understand that,” he said sympathetically, “but I wish to be a friend of your husband’s and perhaps I can help him. The story he told in the box was true—you thought that too, Leon?”
Gonsalez nodded.
“Obviously true,” he said, “I particularly noticed his eyelids. When a man lies he blinks at every repetition of the lie. Have you observed, my dear George, that men cannot tell lies when their hands are clenched and that when women lie they clasp their hands together?”
She looked at Gonsalez in bewilderment. She was in no mood for a lecture on the physiology of expression and even had she known that Leon Gonsalez was the author of three large books which ranked with the best that Lombroso or Mantegazza had given to the world, she would have been no more willing to listen.
“The truth is, Mrs. Storr,” said Manfred, interpreting her new distress, “we think that we can free your husband and prove his innocence. But we want as many facts about the case as we can get.”
She hesitated only a moment.
“I have some furnished lodgings in Gray’s Inn Road,” she said, “perhaps you will be good enough to come with me.”
“My lawyer does not think there is any use in appealing against the sentence,” she went on as they fell in one on either side of her.
Manfred shook his head.
“The Appeal Court would uphold the sentence,” he said quietly, “with the evidence you have there is no possibility of your husband being released.”
She looked round at him in dismay and now he saw that she was very near to tears.
“I thought … you said … ?” she began a little shakily.
Manfred nodded.
“We know Stedland,” he said, “and—”
“The curious thing about blackmailers, is that the occiput is hardly observable,” interrupted Gonsalez thoughtfully. “I examined sixty-two heads in the Spanish prisons and in every case the occipital protuberance was little more than a bony ridge. Now in homicidal heads the occiput sticks out like a pigeon’s egg.”
“My friend is rather an authority upon the structure of the head,” smiled Manfred. “Yes, we know Stedland. His operations have been reported to us from time to time. You remember the Wellingford case, Leon?”
Gonsalez nodded.
“Then you are detectives?” asked the girl.
Manfred laughed softly.
“No, we are not detectives—we are interested in crime. I think we have the best and most thorough record of the unconvicted criminal class of any in the world.”
They walked on in silence for some time.
“Stedland is a bad man,” nodded Gonsalez as though the conviction had suddenly dawned upon him. “Did you observe his ears? They are unusually long and the outer margins are pointed—the Darwinian tubercle, Manfred. And did you remark, my dear friend, that the root of the helix divides the concha into two distinct cavities and that the lobule was adherent? A truly criminal ear. The man has committed murder. It is impossible to possess such an ear and not to murder.”
The flat to which she admitted them was small and wretchedly furnished. Glancing round the tiny dining-room, Manfred noted the essential appointments which accompany a “furnished” flat.
The girl, who had disappeared into her room to take off her coat, now returned, and sat by the table at which, at her invitation, they had seated themselves.
“I realise that I am being indiscreet,” she said with the faintest of smiles; “but I feel that you really want to help me, and I have the curious sense that you can! The police have not been unkind or unfair to me and poor Jeff. On the contrary, they have been most helpful. I fancy that they suspected Mr. Stedland of being a blackmailer, and they were hoping that we could supply some evidence. When that evidence failed, there was nothing for them to do but to press forward the charge. Now, what can I tell you?”
“The story which was not told in court,” replied Manfred.
She was silent for a time.
“I will tell you,” she said at last. “Only my husband’s lawyer knows, and I have an idea that he was sceptical as to the truth of what I am now telling you. And if he is sceptical,” she said in despair, “how can I expect to convince you?”
The eager eyes of Gonsalez were fixed on hers, and it was he who answered.
“We are already convinced, Mrs. Storr,” and Manfred nodded.
Again there was a pause. She was evidently reluctant to begin a narrative which, Manfred guessed, might not be creditable to her; and this proved to be the case.
“When I was a girl,” she began simply, “I was at school in Sussex—a big girls’ school; I think there were over two hundred pupils. I am not going to excuse anything I did,” she went on quickly. “I fell in love with a boy—well, he was a butcher’s boy! That sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? But you understand I was a child, a very impressionable child—oh, it sounds horrible, I know; but I used to meet him in the garden leading out from the prep. room after prayers; he climbed over the wall to those meetings, and we talked and talked, sometimes for an hour. There was no more in it than a boy and girl love affair, and I can’t explain just why I committed such a folly.”
“Mantegazza explains the matter very comfortably in his Study of Attraction,” murmured Leon Gonsalez. “But forgive me, I interrupted you.”
“As I say, it was a boy and girl friendship, a kind of hero worship on my part, for
