To his surprise she answered readily.
“He was an actor,” she said, “and I think he was a clever actor until he took to drink. It was in drink that he murdered my mother. That much I learnt at the home—I have not troubled to enquire since. What are you thinking about, Tab?”
His forehead was knit.
“I am trying to recall the execution of any person named Ardfern in the last twenty years, I know them all by name,” he said slowly. “Have you a telephone?”
She nodded.
In three minutes Tab was talking to the news editor of the “Megaphone.”
“Jacques,” he said, “I want some information. Do you remember any person named Ardfern being executed for murder in the last—” he looked round at the girl—“seventeen or eighteen years?”
“No,” was the instant reply. “There was a man named Ardfern against whom a coroner’s verdict of manslaughter was returned but he skipped the country.”
“What was his first name?” asked Tab eagerly.
“I am not sure that it was Francis or Robert. No, it was Willard—Willard Ardfern. I remember there were two ‘ards’ in it,” said the information bureau.