Mr. Jarrad smiled again. “Why, do you suppose, does a woman do anything?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve only been married a year.”
“Then you know more now than you will in ten. The appearance of Perkins suggested that she might do anything at any moment, if you remember. If the cause was what it usually is with a woman—jealousy, or, in other words, love that has grown the wrong way—I can only wonder why she waited so many years. There are a good many queer things about the case; for instance, that foreigner who shammed dead when he was under arrest, then slid out of the station.”
“I wonder what he was doing here?”
“Might as well ask why Mr. Millicent’s old gardener came back as though he wanted to stick his head into the noose,” said Mr. Jarrad sententiously. “Might as well ask why my client is willing to pay through the nose to get this house back just after letting it for a term of years—though I suspect there’s a woman in that, too. Might as well ask why your client began by trying to hunt out Mr. Millicent’s murderer and finished by finding his daughter. Might as well ask a heap of things that will never be answered, and perhaps in the long run it’s just as well they’re not. We know as much as is good for us as it is, and what we don’t know can’t hurt us much as long as we keep on not knowing it. Now what about the contents of this room?”
“The stuff seems the same with a few additions, but a little differently arranged; that’s all.”
Mr. Jarrad strolled about, his sharp eyes very active, returned to the desk, leaned over, then adjusted his glasses. He peered for a moment and frowned.
“That’s really very odd.”
“What is?”
“You remember we didn’t agree about a stain here, and returned so that I could satisfy you on the point? It was a little difficult to detect.”