“I am at your service, sir.”
Carnthwacke settled himself in his chair and looked back.
“I guess you two gentlemen know pretty well what has brought me here. Mrs. Carnthwacke is at home laid up in bed with the worry of the past few days. I calculate she isn't exactly the stuff criminals are made of. So here I have come in her place for a straight talk face to face. She has told me all about her doings on the day Mr. Bechcombe was murdered. And she told me that she had been to you on the same subject. So I guess you fairly well know what I have come to talk about.”
“Yes, Mrs. Carnthwacke did come to us,” the inspector assented. “It would have been wiser to have come earlier.”
“It would,” agreed Mr. Carnthwacke. “But women ain't the wisest of creatures, even if they are not scared out of their wits as Mrs. Carnthwacke was when she realized that she was the ‘lady of the glove,’ that every newspaper in the kingdom was making such a clamour about.”
“Perhaps it was a good thing for her that she was,” remarked the inspector enigmatically.
Cyril B. Carnthwacke stared at him.
“I don't comprehend. I wasn't aware you dealt in conundrums, inspector.”
“No,” the inspector said as he opened a drawer and began to rummage in it. “Ah, here we are! This is the report of the expert in finger-prints and it shows that it was impossible for the fingers that fitted into this glove to have made the prints on Mr. Bechcombe's throat. They were much too small.”
“I grasp your meaning.” Mr. Carnthwacke sat back in his chair and put his elbows on the arms, joining the tips of his fingers together and surveying them with much interest. “But I reckon I didn't need this corroboration. My wife's word is the goods for me. I guess you gentlemen have tumbled to it that it is to make some inquiries about the diamonds that I have come butting in this morning.”