“By Jove, that’s good news! But what a strange business it is! My mother was with Helen Tower this morning, trying to console her.”
“Good! Now, perhaps, you’ll sit up and take notice. The truth is that the mystery of this outrage on Tower is not—cannot be—of recent origin. I’m sure it is bound up with some long-forgotten occurrence, possibly a crime, in which the secret of the birth and parentage of Winifred Bartlett is involved. That girl is no more the niece of her ‘aunt’ than I am her nephew.”
“But one is usually the niece of one’s aunt.”
“I think you need a cigarette,” said Clancy dryly. “Organisms accustomed to poisonous stimulants often wilt when deprived too suddenly of such harmful tonics.”
Carshaw edged around slightly and looked at this quaint detective.
“I apologize,” he said contritely. “But the crowd got my goat when it jeered at me as a murderer. And the long wait was annoying, too.”
Clancy, however, was not accustomed to having his confidences slighted. He was ruffled.
“Perhaps what I was going to say is hardly worth while,” he snapped. “It was this. If, by chance, your acquaintance with Winifred Bartlett goes beyond to-day’s meeting, and you learn anything of her life and history which sounds strange in your ears, you may be rendering her a far greater service than by flattening Fowle’s nose if you bring your knowledge straight to the Bureau.”
“I’ll not forget, Mr. Clancy. But let me explain. It will be a miracle if I meet Miss Bartlett again.”
“It’ll be a miracle if you don’t,” retorted the other.