"She must have picked it up in the flat on coming home from the Exhibition on the night of the murder, and kept it."
They discussed the circumstances fully, and Clarke went away, his conscience clear of having kept the matter dark from headquarters, yet confident that he had not put Winter on the track of his own special prey, Janoc. And as his footsteps became faint and fainter behind the closed door, Winter let his head fall low, almost upon the desk, and so he remained, hidden, as it were, from himself, a long while, until suddenly springing up with a face all fiery, he cried aloud in a rage:
"Oh, no more sentiment! By the Lord, I'm done with it. From this hour Inspector Furneaux is under the eye of the police."
Furneaux himself was then, for the second time that week, at Mrs. Marsh's lodgings in Porchester Gardens in secret and urgent talk with Rosalind.
"You will think that I am always hunting you down, Miss Marsh," he said genially on entering the room.
"You know best how to describe your profession," she murmured a little bitterly, for his parting shot at their last meeting had struck deep.
"But this time I come more definitely on business," he said, seating himself uninvited, which was a strange thing for Furneaux to do, since he was a gentleman by birth and in manners, "and as I am in a whirl of occupation just now, I will come at once to the point."
"To say 'I will come at once to the point' is to put off coming to it—for while you are saying it——"
"True. The world uses too many words——"
"It is a round world—hence its slowness in coming to a point."