"That's so. Now that you mention it, I recall that she seemed disturbed by the question. And so she is Lee's fiancée, yet he denied all knowledge of her," I mused aloud. "Strange that everyone should have been so intent on shrouding her identity in mystery. What was their reason, do you suppose?" I asked suddenly.
McKelvie shrugged. "I do not know—yet. 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio,'" he said lightly.
I opened my eyes wide at this apt quotation for I did not know him then as I do now and I pondered in silence upon the oddity of hearing a detective spout Shakespeare, until I remembered that Jenkins had said that McKelvie was not a detective in the ordinary sense of the word.
"Very kind of Jenkins," said McKelvie aloud. "By the way I phoned him to meet us at the Darwin house. I may need him in the course of the afternoon."
In view of his stipulation and fearing to lose him before he had begun work on the case, I murmured hastily, "That's quite all right," then I gasped and looked into his amused, slightly ironical eyes.
"Why, man, it's marvelous," I said.
"What is?" he asked coolly, although he knew exactly what I meant.
"Your reading of my thought," I replied. "Why you might almost be Sherlock Holmes himself."
"No. I lay no such flattering unction to my soul, if you will pardon the misquotation. Sherlock Holmes is in a class by himself. No one can touch him, but I have studied his methods and in this case it was not very difficult to guess what you were thinking when you eyed me so hard and murmured, 'Jenkins,' unconsciously, particularly when I know Jenkins so well."
We had been walking up Center Street as we talked, in total disregard of the fact that my car was parked in front of the Tombs, but now McKelvie paused abruptly and I saw that we were standing in front of Police Headquarters.