But as we were entering the building I again spoke to him:
“I must have an attorney, you know, and I will have to get bail.”
He nodded.
“You’ll get an attorney in court fast enough. This, though, is not a bailable matter.”
“Nonsense!” I exclaimed. “There is only one of that kind.”
“And that’s yours.”
The reply sent a shudder through me. Robbery—yes, I had expected that; but murder! At the moment I felt that no one had ever known what horror is—that I alone knew. But I have at least a modicum of common sense, and it surged at once to my rescue. Often I have told myself—and others—that it is stupid to be afraid of anything, no matter what, except danger, damp sheets, and one’s own misdeeds. I told myself so then. In the telling I reflected that while, after all, I may have murdered a tune or two, yet otherwise—no, they might hold me, but never could they keep me on any such charge.
Further meditations were for the moment interrupted. Between the two men, one of whom still had a hand on my shoulder, I had marched along a hall, and was now taken into a room where sat one of the finest—a good-looking chap, with alert eyes and a drooping mustache.
“We’ve got him, inspector!” said my friend in plain clothes. In the restrained idiom of the street, he added: “And with the goods on.”
In speaking, he produced the watch and cigarette case, which the inspector, with a curious smile, examined.
Abruptly he looked up at me. The smile had gone.
“Where did you get these things?”
I was about to tell him I had forgotten; but, rallying, I answered:
“They were given me.”
At that, point-blank, he fired:
“By Kenneth Mar?”
I dodged it:
“No, not by Kenneth Mar.”
Before firing again, he pursed his lips.
“You knew him, though?”
I shrugged my free shoulder.
“Slightly.”
For a second he seemed to be taking that in; then at once, without warning, he shot out:
“What did you do with the body?”
At this explosion I started.
“Nothing whatever. What should I have done with it? Why do you ask?”
He helped himself, coolly enough, I thought, to a cigarette from that case, lighted it contemplatively, nodded, and said:
“I’ll tell you.” He paused, inhaled the smoke, blew it, and added: “A week ago today, Kenneth Mar escorted a young woman to her home. He went to the door with her, waited until it was opened, went away, passed an acquaintance, who saw him approach an apartment house in which he lived, and which was a bit beyond. But that house Mar never entered. No one has seen Mar since. On the day when he disappeared, the young woman whom he took to her home knew that he had that case and that watch with him. In that watch is her own picture. Where did you get it? Answer me!”
It was rather a volley, but I faced it.
“Really, inspector, I shall have to throw myself on your indulgence. I have a very poor memory—particularly for anything important—and I can only assure you that—that—”
He cut me short:
“Where have you been living these last few days?”
The unexpected twist pulled the truth out of me:
“Nine ninety-nine Great Jones Street.”
At this, with that gravity which, even in serious matters, officials will display, he motioned at the policeman.
“Take him in there.”
Immediately to the plainclothes man he added:
“Telephone for Miss Faille.”
In so ordering, he looked at me, to judge, perhaps, the effect of that name; and at once, as I turned to enter the room which he had indicated, I fell to thinking of this girl whom I knew Kenneth Mar had loved. Knowledge of that intimate fact was not confined to me. Everybody knew it—everybody, that is, who reads the papers; and for the past week the papers had dripped with this matter which the inspector had briefly resumed. But though the outlines, and particularly the headlines, of the mystery were familiar enough to all, yet the deeper mystery that was behind it was not solved until later; and then generally resolved itself into the verdict that Kenneth Mar was cracked.
A man in love usually is a bit off. In France, pathologists so ordinarily recognize the fact that they classify the condition as a disease induced by a fermentation of the molecules of the imagination. Assuming the diagnosis to be correct, necessarily there must exist a superinducing cause. In the present instance that cause was Janet Faille. The mere sight of her was headier than cups of champagne. At the risk of appearing extravagant—an appearance parenthetically for which I have no great dislike—I can compare her only to the first heroine of the first hexameters, that vision at sight of whose undreamed-of beauty the Trojans stopped, and stood, and mused.
A young person of such allurement is bound to have many suitors, and Janet Faille had. Among the favored were Kenneth Mar and another man, who must have been a genius, for thus far he had managed to keep his name out of print.
Between the two Janet Faille had seemed to hesitate. Yet it may be that she seemed to only. In the depths of her delicate heart, perhaps she knew.
It was in these circumstances that the mystery occurred, and I, who, for my sins, had been instrumental in it hid in shabby lodgings until what money I had was gone, and I was forced into the disastrous visit to Cohen and his gorilla friend. Never in the world would I have gone to that shop, or to any other of the kind, had I known that descriptions of the watch and of the cigarette case had been sent about. The papers had supplied me with every variety of imaginable and unimaginable information concerning the matter; yet of these things not a word.
On the contrary, you were told that Kenneth Mar was not precisely a pauper; that he claimed to
