"That doesn't explain the cash. No broker pays in cash."

"Well I can think of ten good reasons why he couldn't have done it," Sadie said obstinately. She had too warm a heart, perhaps, to make an ideal investigator.

That night Roland asked me home to supper again. This was about a week after the first occasion. The old woman had gone to bed and he cooked creamed oysters in a chafing-dish, while I looked at the paper.

"Wouldn't it be nice to have white hands waiting at home to do that for you?" I suggested teasingly.

"Never for me!" he said with a bitter smile.

"Why not?"

"What I can have I don't want. What I want I can never have."

"You never can tell," I said encouragingly. I was thinking what a superb couple the handsome young pair made on the stage. It seemed low to cross-examine him while he was preparing to feed me, but there was no help for it.

"The market is off again," I said carelessly. "Chance for somebody to make money."

"How can you make money when the market is going down," he said innocently.