He shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he said in a stifled voice. "I doubt if I could clear myself. Anyway I shan't try. It—it is killed!"
He bent a look of fathomless reproach on her. "Good-bye, Irma," he said quietly. "I'm glad I was the means of your getting your jewels back. I never knew they had been stolen."
This to me was the purest exhibition of cheek I had ever met with. I was hard put to it to keep my hands off the man. If she had not been there! He went. And when I turned around Irma had gone back into the next room. I was angry through and through, and yet—and yet——! A nagging little doubt teased me.
So ended, as I thought, the case of the blue pearls. Little did I suspect what was on the way.
10
The following day was a blue one for me. Deprived of all the exciting activities of the past few weeks I was at a loss what to do with myself. Moreover, I was dissatisfied with the result of those activities. I had won out, so to speak, but my client had not. For her only tragic unhappiness had come of it. Meanwhile that little inner voice continued to whisper that I had not got to the bottom of the case. I could not put that young fellow's amazed and despairing face out of my mind. It did not fit into the theory of his guilt. On top of it all I had had a quarrel with Sadie the night before.
About noon my uncomfortable thoughts were broken into by the entrance of Sadie herself with storm signals flying, to wit: a pair of flashing blue eyes and a red flag hoisted in either cheek. I had supposed that she was already on the way to Amityville with Miss Hamerton, where they were to stay at a sanatorium conducted by a doctor friend of mine.
Before I could speak she exploded like a bomb in my office. "Ben, you've been a fool!"
"Eh?" I said, blinking and looking precious like one, I expect.