“I studied it for yeals in Japan—” began Jiro, but in vain, for his very much better half resented the word “idiomatic.”
“I don’t know about that,” she snorted. “He talked a lot of nonsense when we were married, but I’ve made him drop it, and he is teaching me Japanese.”
“His task is a pleasant one. It is the tongue of poetry and love.”
Again there was a pause. A minute later Brett was standing in the street trying to determine how best to act.
He was fully persuaded that Jiro had, in the first place, identified the crest as belonging to one of the many Samurai clans. But the motto was new to him, and its discovery had revealed the particular family which claimed its use.
Why did he refuse to impart his knowledge? There must be plenty of Japanese in London who would give this information readily.
Again, why did he lie about the type-writer, and endeavour to mislead him as to the make of the machine he used?
To-morrow, for a certainty, Jiro would dispose of the Remington which he now possessed. Well, he should meet with a ready purchaser, if a letter from Brett to every agency in London would expedite matters.
He did not credit Jiro with the death of Sir Alan Hume-Frazer, nor even with complicity in the crime. The Japanese had acted as the unwitting tool of a stronger personality, and the little man’s brain was even at this moment considering fresh aspects of the affair not previously within his ken.
Moreover, how maddening the whole thing was! Beginning with Hume’s fantastic dream, he reviewed the hitherto unknown elements in the case—Capella’s fierce passion and queer behaviour, culminating in a sudden journey to Italy, Margaret’s silent agony, the existence of an Argentine cousin, the evidence of “Rabbit Jack,” the punning motto on the Ko-Katana, Jiro’s perturbation and desire to prevent his wife’s unconscious disclosures.