If he had thought to mollify me by this assertion, he did not succeed. He saw it and made haste to say:
“Not that I doubt your consideration for them, only the justness of your conclusions.”
“You have doubted those before and with more reason,” I replied, “yet they were not altogether false.”
“That I am willing to acknowledge, so willing that if you still think after I have told my story that yours is apropos, then I will listen to it only too eagerly. My object is to find the real criminal in this matter. I say at the present moment it is Mother Jane.”
“God grant you are right,” I said, influenced in spite of myself by the calm assurance of his manner. “If she was at the house night before last between eleven and twelve, then perhaps she is all you think her. But I see no reason to believe it—not yet, Mr. Gryce. Supposing you give me one. It would be better than all this controversy. One small reason, Mr. Gryce, as good as”—I did not say what, but the fillip it gave to his intention stood me in good stead, for he launched immediately into the matter with no further play upon my curiosity, which was now, as you can believe, thoroughly aroused, though I could not believe that anything he had to bring up against Mother Jane could for a moment stand against the death and the burial I had witnessed in Miss Knollys’ house during the two previous nights.
XXIV
The Enigma of Numbers
“When in our first conversation on this topic I told you that Mother Jane was not to be considered in this matter, I meant she was not to be considered by you. She was a subject to be handled by the police, and we have handled her. Yesterday afternoon I made a search of her cabin.” Here Mr. Gryce paused and eyed me quizzically. He sometimes does eye me, which same I cannot regard as a compliment, considering how fond he is of concentrating all his wisdom upon small and insignificant objects.
“I wonder,” said he, “what you would have done in such a search as that. It was no common one, I assure you. There are not many hiding-places between Mother Jane’s four walls.”
I felt myself begin to tremble, with eagerness, of course.
“I wish I had been given the opportunity,” said I—“that is, if anything was to be found there.”
He seemed to be in a sympathetic mood toward me, or perhaps—and this is the likelier supposition—he had a minute of leisure and thought he could afford to give himself a little quiet amusement. However that was, he answered me by saying:
“The opportunity is not lost. You have been in her cabin and have noted, I have no doubt, its extreme simplicity. Yet it contains, or rather did contain up till last night, distinct evidences of more than one of the crimes which have been perpetrated in this lane.”
“Good! And you want me to guess where you found them? Well, it’s not fair.”
“Ah, and why not?”
“Because you probably did not find them on your first attempt. You had time to look about. I am asked to guess at once and without second trial what I warrant it took you several trials to determine.”
He could not help but laugh. “And why do you think it took me several trials?”
“Because there is more than one thing in that room made up of parts.”
“Parts?” He attempted to look puzzled, but I would not have it.
“You know what I mean,” I declared; “seventy parts, twenty-eight, or whatever the numbers are she so constantly mutters.”
His admiration was unqualified and sincere.
“Miss Butterworth,” said he, “you are a woman after my own heart. How came you to think that her mutterings had anything to do with a hiding-place?”
“Because it did not have anything to do with the amount of money I gave her. When I handed her twenty-five cents, she cried, ‘Seventy, twenty-eight, and now ten!’ Ten what? Not ten cents or ten dollars, but ten—”
“Why do you stop?”
“I do not want to risk my reputation on a guess. There is a quilt on the bed made up of innumerable pieces. There is a floor of neatly laid brick—”
“And there is a Bible on the stand whose leaves number many over seventy.”
“Ah, it was in the Bible you found—”
His smile put mine quite to shame.
“I must acknowledge,” he cried, “that I looked in the Bible, but I found nothing there beyond what we all seek when we open its sacred covers. Shall I tell my story?”
He was evidently bursting with pride. You would think that after a half-century of just such successes, a man would take his honors more quietly. But pshaw! Human nature is just the same in the old as in the young. He was no more tired of compliment or of awakening the astonishment of those he confided in, than when he aroused the admiration of the force by his triumphant handling of the Leavenworth Case. Of course in presence of such weakness I could do nothing less than give him a sympathetic ear. I may be old myself some day. Besides, his story was likely to prove more or less interesting.
“Tell your story?” I repeated. “Don’t you see that I am”—I was going to say “on pins and needles till I hear it,” but the expression is too vulgar for a woman of my
