“How many women have you been intimate with all over the world, Pritch?”
Pritchard blushed plum colour to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch neck.
“’Undreds,” said Pyecroft. “So’ve I. How many of ’em can you remember in your own mind, settin’ aside the first—an’ per’aps the last—and one more?”
“Few, wonderful few, now I tax myself,” said Sergeant Pritchard, relievedly.
“An’ how many times might you ’ave been at Aukland?”
“One—two,” he began. “Why, I can’t make it more than three times in ten years. But I can remember every time that I ever saw Mrs. B.”
“So can I—an’ I’ve only been to Auckland twice—how she stood an’ what she was sayin’ an’ what she looked like. That’s the secret. ’Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walked down a street, but most of ’em you can live with a month on end, an’ next commission you’d be put to it to certify whether they talked in their sleep or not, as one might say.”
“Ah,” said Hooper. “That’s more the idea. I’ve known just two women of that nature.”
“An’ it was no fault o’ theirs?” asked Pritchard.
“None whatever. I know that!”