... I told Danjuro precisely what had happened at Paddington and how Connie herself had explained it.
He listened to me in attentive silence. When I had finished, I saw that a small leather pocket-book had appeared in his hands—everything that the fellow did had the uncanny effect of a clever trick—and he was turning over the leaves.
"So far," he began, "in the consideration of this problem we have been eliminating impossibilities, or improbabilities so strong that they amount to that. This has left us with a small residuum of fact, unproved fact, but sufficient to work from. One thing emerges clearly. It is the nature and personality of our unknown friend. It is not too much to say that he MUST be very like what we have imagined him to be. A certain person appears dimly on the scene—this Major Helzephron. Let us see how his personality squares with the personality we have been deducing. Mr. Thumbwood has apparently collected some information. I have done so, too. Let us pool results!" He looked at Charles, who blushed.
"Out with it, Charles; you've done splendidly," I said.
"Well, Sir John, I found out that this gentleman is a pretty bad wrong-'un, judging by the company he keeps. And he used to annoy Miss Shepherd something chronic. He'd wait at the stage-door and try and speak to her when she got into the car after the performance, and he was always leaving notes and flowers with the stage-door keeper. Miss Shepherd would never take them. She always sent them back from her room. It got so bad at last that she complained to the stage manager, and he had a plain clothes man from Vine Street there one night. Major Helzephron was told off pretty plainly, I hear. He used to come very nasty sometimes, and once or twice he was fair blotto! And Mr. Meggit, the commission agent, knows him well. He's done a lot of racing in his time, and no open scandal. But he knows how to work the market, and the best men won't lay him the odds no more."
I shrugged my shoulders. It was only what one expected. The man was one of the fast blackguards who infest the West End of London; that was all. There were dozens like him. The facts only seemed to prove that he could not possibly be connected with the Atlantic outrages.
"You see?" I said to the Japanese, sure that he would follow my thought. Then I thanked good little Charles and he left the room.
"That is the surface," Danjuro replied. "I cross-examined a woman who was in constant attendance on Miss Shepherd. From her I learnt just what your servant has discovered. But I went a little deeper. It is a case of genuine overmastering passion on the part of this man. Nothing less. He is of a dangerous age for that to come to him, certainly over forty-five years. A woman knows. But that is not all."
"So far we have learnt nothing of importance." I was getting restive, I wanted to be doing something. And yet, what was there to do? If I had thought all night by myself I could not have mapped out the situation more clearly. And as I looked at the little man, half lost in a big saddlebag chair, I felt ashamed of my irritation. A brain packed in ice was there, a logical machine of the first order. I could not expect humanity, sympathy, from such a one. Still, it would have helped! Hadn't I lost the one thing that made life worth living? What might not be happening to Connie even now?
... He read my thoughts like a book, confound him!