To this Nick answered:
“Your earnest desire to have them captured is creditable to both your heart and your head.”
These words appeared to please the girl, who said:
“Thank you for saying so. I had feared you might have considered me something of a barbarian, from the way I answered you a while ago. And yet, I spoke the truth, as you must know.”
“So I do. As a matter of fact, it would be a little singular if you showed much grief over the death of a man you never saw.”
“Besides which, you must remember that I have always in my mind’s eye the fact that mother was forced to suffer through the insane jealousy of my father.”
“True again.”
“Had I come in contact with him for a time, that feeling might have eventually been changed, but at the present I cannot think of him without coupling my mother’s wrong with it.”
The detective bowed.
Presently remarking something to the effect that he did not have any time to waste, he asked Barnes to step aside with him for a minute.