"I'm not one of those spectacular detectives," he said, "who pick up a handkerchief in the street, and declare at once that it was dropped by a cross-eyed lady with one front tooth missing, who was on her way to visit her step-daughter now living in Jamaica, Long Island, but who formerly was a governess in a doctor's family in Meriden, Connecticut."
I laughed at this bit of sarcasm, but was too vitally interested in the subject in hand to care for amusing side issues.
"Do you say then, inspector," I continued, "that there was positively no way for any one else to get into that apartment, and that therefore Mr. Pembroke necessarily met his death at the hands of his niece or the colored servant?"
"Or both," added Mr. Crawford.
"You assert that as your unqualified opinion?"
"I assert it as an incontrovertible fact," said Inspector Crawford, in his decided way, "and, though it needs no backing up of evidence, the evidence all points unmistakably to the same fact. There are motive, opportunity, and a weapon at hand. What more is there to say?"
"There is only this to say," I declared, maddened by his air of finality: "that Miss Pembroke did not do it; that neither she nor the black woman knows who did do it; and that I take it upon myself to prove this when the occasion shall arise to do so."
Again the inspector looked at me with that compassionate expression that irritated me beyond words.
"Mr. Landon," he said, "I have no desire to be personal, but may I ask you, if you were as absolutely disinterested in the Pembroke case as I am, would you not incline to my opinion?"
This silenced me, for I well knew that but for my interest in Janet Pembroke I should inevitably be forced to Mr. Crawford's point of view.