Meanwhile, from the outer room there had been filtering the sound of voices and of brief, unemphasized commands. If I heard, I did not heed. Engrossed as I was in that trick, I had forgotten even the presence of the fat policeman, who sat beside me—a club in one hand, my arm in the other.
But now my attention veered. Before me over the open door was a painting of a girl, the mediocre copy of an inferior daub which, years before, I had seen in the Paris Salon. At the thought of that jungle, of its mile after mile of improbable nymphs and vaselined landscapes, ardently I wished myself back there. Two hours of it, succeeded by massage, was, I knew, excellent for obesity. No doubt a bicycle is better, but that is no longer modish, and I told myself there should be something for every taste, however infastidious.
Again I looked at the painting. In spite of the sin of it, it suggested somebody—but whom? Then suddenly I knew, for as suddenly I heard her. In those accents which certain sections of Fifth Avenue share with Mayfair, Janet Faille was talking to the inspector.
I started. But that hand on my shoulder gripped me. The prompt billy had jumped.
“No,” I heard her say, “it is not an inconvenience. I had intended coming. When I last saw you I was not entirely frank.”
“And you will be so now, Miss Faille?” I heard the inspector interject, and interject, moreover, in a tone so different from that in which he had spoken to me that I wondered could he be a ventriloquist. But, then, beauty is a great emollient.
“I told you,” the girl was saying, “that I had no theory. That was untrue. But though I did have one, you will, perhaps, appreciate why I did not mention it. You know that Mr. Mar was—well, that he admired me.”
“He would have been blind if he had not,” that man threw in.
“But what you do not know,” the girl resumed, “is that I cared for him also. Oh, very, very much more than he knew—far more than I let him imagine. I was even guilty of trying to get him to think that I was interested elsewhere, when I was not—not in the very least, believe me.”
I could not see her tears, but it seemed to me I heard them. Yet presently, with a tremor in that voice of silk, the tale continued, and, though I could not see, I could fancy her two hands crushed together.
“Well, that last afternoon, when he took me home—”
“Permit me,” the inspector interrupted. “The other man—the one whom you seemed to favor—have you seen him since?”
“No, no—nor shall I ever again.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No, nor do I want to.”
“What is he like?”
“Tall and dark, with regular features.”
At this the policeman beside me turned. He was looking me over.
Meanwhile, that voice which I have compared to silk became like a thread snapped swiftly. There was silence in the outer room—yet a silence that was punctuated soon by little sobs, by little, herculean efforts to arrest them.
“I wish I were dead!” she at last cried out. “It was I who killed him.”
“Miss Faille!” the inspector protested.
“Yes. At first I thought he had gone away to try me, to see if in his absence I would not give some sign to show—to show—And now! Is it not clear that, since you have those things of his, he must have killed himself, and that it was I who drove him to it?”
After the logic of that again for a moment there was silence. Then, with the customary combination of platitude and imagination, the inspector went at it:
“You see, Miss Faille, in matters of this kind the obvious is very misleading. The person from whom we got this watch and cigarette case has been hiding in Great Jones Street. I have sent to the place, and I find that he took lodgings there shortly after Mar’s disappearance. I find, too, that, except at night, and except today, when we got him, always he remained locked in his room.”
Once more there was a sob, the effort to subdue it, another little cry:
“He must have—Oh, he must have found Kenneth, and robbed him. Don’t you think so?”
“If he did, he found him before he was lost. But everything is possible. It is possible, for instance, that the man whom you seemed to favor, but who doubtless knew that in reality you preferred Mar, did away with him for that very reason, and then, that the crime might be attributed to a footpad, pocketed his valuables. That is usual, but what is usual, also, once the crime committed, he lost his nerve, and ran to cover.”
“What a Solomon!” I thought.
“Here!” I heard the inspector call. “Bring the suspect in here.”
In a moment I was before them—before the inspector, rather, for Janet’s back was toward me.
Slowly she turned; her deep eyes widened, her mouth half opened, closed, opened again; with a little bleat, she started to me, while, from over her shoulder, she called:
“This is Kenneth Mar!”
I would have laughed. I knew that what she said was true; knew that she was, also; knew, too, that I had hidden away for the very reason she stated, in order that some sign of
