For the moment Zona had forgotten her haste to get away and was leaning forward earnestly over the empty tea-caddy.
"Most assuredly," I agreed, realizing suddenly one reason why Freud is taken up so readily in a circle such as that which I was now tangent to. He offers an easy, scientific highroad to the discussion of intimate sex—and that is, after all, under the veneer, the middle name of Greenwich Village, as it is of all "highbrows" when one comes to get under their skins and truly understand what secretly is back of their "uplifts" and "reforms" in social evils and hygiene.
"But what of Honora?" I asked, loath to lose the piquant assistance of Zona, once I had it. "Why was she here? Had she come to watch Shattuck? Or was it to watch Vina? Or was it really to watch her husband? Her husband or Shattuck—I wonder which?"
"Suppose it was either?" shrugged Zona, nonchalantly. "What of it?"
Evidently the spell of her interest in the Freud discussion had broken when she finished her last sentence.
"In the former case she is merely old-fashioned," added Zona, "in the latter merely foolish."
With this typical meaningless cleverness that in reality hides the shallowness of our advanced "thinkers" Zona bade us adieu. Belle and I chatted a few moments, when she suddenly discovered she was half an hour late for an engagement. I settled the check, and we tipped our way out and into a cab that whirled us up-town, while Belle poked fun at my benighted conservatism, which I did not mind in the least. I left her at her hotel, with hearty thanks for the great help she had been in the case, and sincerely happy, in addition to that, for a pleasant couple of hours at dinner with a girl with whom one might disagree yet still regard highly.
A few minutes later I was at the laboratory, full of a new-born theory that Shattuck, down in the Village, had studied Freud more than we had suspected merely from finding Freud's books in his library—that he must have known Honora's dreams, interpreted them, and found out secretly she still loved him, as her open jealousy had, perhaps, showed in the incident I had unearthed.
Craig was already there, and at work. He listened attentively and without comment to what I had to report.
"What have you found?" I asked, finally, when I had finished with my own facts and theories.