For a few moments he looked out upon the cheerless drab roofs of the barracks, with their wisps of pale smoke swirling upward into the leaden sky; counted the dozen gnarled and scrubby trees, as had become a habit with him; rested his eyes upon the black and shriveled remnants of summer flower-beds thrusting their frost-shrunken stalks through the snow, and then, almost as if he were speaking to himself, he said, “Steele, are you beautyproof?”
There was no banter in his voice. It was low, so low that it had in it the ring of something more than mere desire for answer, and when the inspector turned, Philip observed a thing that he had never seen before—a flush in MacGregor's face. His pale eyes gleamed. His voice was filled with an intense earnestness as he repeated the question. “I want to know, Steele. Are you beauty-proof?”
In spite of himself Philip felt the fire rising in his own face. In that moment the inspector could have hit on no words that would have thrilled him more deeply than those which he had spoken. Beauty-proof! Did MacGregor know? Was it possible— He took a step forward, words came to his lips, but he caught himself before he had given voice to them.
Beauty-proof!
He laughed, softly, as the inspector had laughed a few moments before. But there was a strange tenseness in his face—something which MacGregor saw, but could not understand.
“Beauty-proof?” He repeated the words, looking keenly at the other. “Yes, I think I am, sir.”
“You think you are?”
“I am quite sure that I am. Inspector. That is as far as I can go.”
The inspector seated himself at his desk and opened a drawer. From it he took a photograph. For some time he gazed at it in silence, puffing out clouds of smoke from his cigar. Then, without lifting his eyes from the picture, he said: “I am going to put you up against a queer case, Steele, and the strangest thing about it is its very simplicity. It's a job for the greenest rookie in the service, and yet I swear that there isn't another man in Saskatchewan to whom I would talk as I am about to talk to you. Rather paradoxical, isn't it?”
“Rather,” agreed Philip.