“Well, here I am, Mr. Kirk,” she said. “Oh—Miss Morrow—and Mr. Chan. I’m a wreck, I know. That thing last night upset me terribly—such a charming man, Sir Frederic. Has—has anything been unearthed—any clue?”
“Nothing much,” replied Kirk, “as yet. Please sit down.”
“Just a moment,” said Miss Morrow. “I must get Captain Flannery.”
“I will go, please,” Chan told her, and hurried out.
He pushed open the door of the office occupied by the Calcutta Importers. Captain Flannery was standing, red-faced and angry, and before him sat Lila Barr, again in tears. The Captain swung about. “Yes?” he snapped.
“You are wanted, Captain,” Chan said. “Miss Garland is here.”
“All right.” He turned to the weeping girl. “I’ll see you again, young woman.” She did not reply. He followed Chan to the hall.
“You too have some success as a tear-starter,” suggested Chan.
“Yeah—she’s the easiest crier I’ve met this year. I wasn’t any too gentle with her. It don’t pay.”
“Your methods, of course, had amazing success?”
“Oh—she stuck to her story. But you take it from me, she knows more than she’s telling. Too many tears for an innocent bystander. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars right now that she’s Eve Durand.”
Chan shrugged. “My race,” he said, “possesses great fondness for gambling. Not to go astray into ruin, I am compelled to overlook even easy methods of gain in that line.”
Captain Flannery was driven back to his favorite phrase. “Is that so?” he replied, and they entered Kirk’s office.
When they were all in the middle room, Barry Kirk shut the door on the interested Mr. Kinsey. Captain Flannery faced Gloria Garland.
“I want to see you. You know who I am. I was upstairs last night. So your name’s Gloria Garland, is it?”
She looked up at him a bit apprehensively. “Yes, of course.”
“Are you telling your real name, lady?”
“Well, it’s the name I have used for many years. I—”
“Oh? So it isn’t the real one?”
“Not exactly. It’s a name I took—”
“I see. You took a name that didn’t belong to you.” The Captain’s tone implied a state’s prison offense. “You had reasons, I suppose?”
“I certainly had.” The woman looked at him with growing anger. “My name was Ida Pingle, and I didn’t think that would go well in the theater. So I called myself Gloria Garland.”
“All right. You admit you travel under an assumed name?”
“I don’t care for the way you put it. A great many people on the stage have taken more attractive names than their own. I have done nothing to justify your rudeness—”
“I can quite understand your feeling,” said Miss Morrow, with a disapproving glance at the Captain. “From this point I will take up the inquiry.”
“I wish you would,” remarked Miss Garland warmly.
“Had you ever met Sir Frederic Bruce before you came to Mr. Kirk’s dinner party last night?” the girl inquired.
“No, I had not.”
“He was, then, a complete stranger to you?”
“He certainly was. Why should you ask me that?”
“You had no private interview with him last night?”
“No. None.”
Captain Flannery stepped forward, his mouth open, about to speak. Miss Morrow raised her hand. “Just a moment, Captain. Miss Garland, I warn you this is a serious business. You should tell the truth.”
“Well—” Her manner became uncertain. “What makes you think I’m—”
“Lying? We know it,” exploded Flannery.
“You broke the string of your necklace last night on your way to the bungalow,” Miss Morrow continued. “Where did that accident happen?”
“On the stairs—the stairs leading up from the twentieth floor to the roof.”
“Did you recover all the pearls?”
“Yes—I think so. I wasn’t quite sure of the number. Of course, I needn’t tell you they’re only imitation. I couldn’t afford the real thing.”
Miss Morrow opened her handbag, and laid a solitary pearl on the desk. “Do you recognize that, Miss Garland?”
“Why—why, yes. It belongs to me, of course. Thank you so much. Where—er—where did you find it?”
“We found it,” said Miss Morrow slowly, “under the desk in this room.” The woman flushed, and made no reply. There was a moment’s strained silence. “Miss Garland,” the girl went on, “I think you had better change your tactics. The truth, if you please.”
The actress shrugged. “I fancy you’re right. I was only trying to keep out of this. It’s not the sort of publicity I want. And as a matter of fact, I’m not in it very deep.”
“But you really broke the string in this office, where you had come for a talk with Sir Frederic?”
“Yes, that’s true. I caught the necklace on a corner of the desk, when I got up to go.”
“Please don’t start with the moment when you got up to go. Take it from the beginning, if you will.”
“Very good. When I said I had never seen Sir Frederic before last night, I was telling the truth. I had left the elevator and was crossing the hallway to the stairs, when the door of these offices opened and a man stood on the threshold. He said: ‘You are Miss Garland, I believe?’ I told him that was my name, and he said he was Sir Frederic Bruce, Mr. Kirk’s guest, and that he wanted to have a talk with me, alone, before we met upstairs.”
“Yes—go on.”
“Well, it seemed odd, but he was such a distinguished-looking man I felt it must be all right, so I followed him in here. We sat down, and he started in to tell me who he was—Scotland Yard, and all that. I’m English, of course, and I have the greatest respect for anyone from the Yard. He talked around for a minute, and then he went to the point.”
“Ah, yes,” smiled Miss Morrow. “That’s what we are waiting for. What was the point?”
“He—he wanted to ask me something.”
“Yes? What?”
“He wanted to ask me if I could identify a woman who disappeared
