“But you said you’d had the key to it all right in your hands from the start!” Dennis objected.
“I had. It was this!” McCarty reached in his pocket and drew forth a thin pamphlet bound in blue paper. “You’ve both kidded me about reading up on this psychology stuff, to try to keep up with the boys down at headquarters, but it was getting to me and I wanted everything I could lay my hands on that seemed to have any bearing on it. The first night, when we came here to let Orbit know his valet was dead, I found this behind some other books downstairs in the library and I—borrowed it. It turned out to be nothing at all but the history of a family, like a kind of a sermon on heredity, and I saw it had been published in London. I began to read it, wondering why Orbit would be interested in it, and I never heard the like of such a crew! From sheep-stealing to assassinating crowned heads, there was nothing they didn’t go in for, and I’d say that not one in ten generations died in their beds! They were a rare old family, the Jessups!”
“‘Jessups!’” the inspector repeated. “Why, they’re the family I spoke about this morning, though I couldn’t recall the name!—the ones that are contrasted with the grand record of the Parsons.”
“Sure, they are!” McCarty grinned. Then his face sobered. “I knew it then, for I’d put in good time in the library on Thursday looking them both up, but I didn’t mention it because Orbit himself is the last of the Jessups.”
“Orbit—!”
“His grandmother on his mother’s side was the daughter of old Gideon Jessups who was hung down South for highway robbery and murder; another of his daughters died insane and two of his sons were convicts—but there’s no use going into it all. You’ll mind you said the male members of the line died out long ago, but it happens that no record was kept of the female side of the house except this little book here. I’m going to tell Parsons in the morning, for he’ll not spread such a thing, and there’s something I want to know. If there’s any sense at all to this heredity notion, it don’t look as if Henry Orbit stood much of a chance!”
“I can scarcely believe it yet, gentlemen!” Benjamin Parsons exclaimed. “The news that Henry Orbit had committed suicide in some mysterious manner, leaving a written confession, came like a thunderclap but now that you tell me the blood of the Jessups flows in his veins it explains many things!”
“Did you ever meet Orbit, Mr. Parsons?” McCarty asked. “Ever talk to him?”
“Once. It was two years ago but the experience, though trivial in itself, was so curiously unpleasant that it has never passed completely from my mind.” He paused, glancing toward the window through which the sunshine was pouring and listening to the not-far-distant chiming of church bells. “I came home very late from an evening meeting of a charitable organization. It was raining in torrents, I had forgotten my key to the gates and the watchman was standing in the shelter of a doorway far down the block; I could not attract his attention and I was drenched. All at once some one came up behind me, said: ‘Allow me, Mr. Parsons!’ and opened the gate for me. I was surprised, for the voice was unknown to me, but in the light of the street lamp I recognized Henry Orbit.