“’Tis not what I expected from you, sir, after all these years, but we’ll try to bear up under the injustice of it! The papers came to us in a confidential way and since all Parsons wants is to get them back again there’s no harm done.”
“Look here!” The amusement had faded from the inspector’s countenance. “Orbit’s house was broken into that same night and he was chloroformed—!”
“May my right arm drop off this minute if we had anything to do with that!” McCarty’s solemn tones held the ring of truth. “I won’t say that I’ve not my own suspicions about it, but they come to me since and they’re all part and parcel of that notion I’ve got concerning the whole case. However, getting back to Parsons, maybe you’d like to look over what was stolen from his filing case in that outrageous robbery. You’ll know then why the housemaid and the page boy looked familiar to you.”
He handed the records of Parsons’ domestic staff to the inspector and watched with a twinkle as the other ran quickly through them. When his astonished comments had ceased, he produced the manuscript notes but drew no attention to the reference to fluorine gas, nor did he mention the leaf he had torn from the encyclopædia as he briefly recounted the interview with the eccentric philanthropist on the previous day.
“I left asking myself was he a crook or a crank or a saint on earth?” he concluded. “What’s your opinion of him?”
“He may be a dreamer, with a lot of ideas for bettering the world, that will never work out while we’re full of original sin, but I think he’s a wonderful old character and worthy of his family,” the inspector replied reflectively. “I was talking to one of these psycho-analysts who is going to lecture to us in the commissioner’s new school the other day and he knew all about them; it seems they’re celebrated among students of heredity as a shining example of what good blood means. There are thousands of ‘Parsons,’ I suppose, but I’m talking about the descendants of the first David Parsons and the old gentleman we know is the last in the direct male line.”
“I know,” McCarty remarked. “Five governors they’ve given to the New England states, eight clergymen in America, fourteen foreign missionaries, eleven college professors and two of them became college presidents, and I can’t recall how many army and navy officers and other big men. I’ve been looking them up a little, myself.”
“The devil you have!” The inspector stared. “Keeping up with the commissioner’s latest innovations, eh? Did you know that the Parsons have been contrasted by these same students of heredity with another family that’s supposed to be the worst on record?”
“I’ve no way of getting at things like those psycho-analysts,” McCarty responded apologetically. “What about this other family?”
“I’ve forgotten the name but they died out long ago, the male members, anyway. Every kind of crime and general crookedness was represented among them.—But we’re wasting time. I suppose you want me to return these papers to Parsons with the best excuse I can think of?”