“Why bother to arrange anything? I’ll bring my findings to Mr. Markham personally. Only too glad. Fascinating game, being a sleuth.”
Vance and I returned home in the District Attorney’s car, and Markham continued to the office. At seven o’clock that night the three of us met at the Stuyvesant Club for dinner; and at half past eight we were sitting in Markham’s favorite corner of the lounge-room smoking and having our coffee.
During the meal no mention of the case had been made. The late editions of the afternoon papers had carried brief accounts of Robin’s death. Heath had evidently succeeded in curbing the reporters’ curiosity and clipping the wings of their imagination. The District Attorney’s office being closed, the newspaper men were unable to bombard Markham with questions, and so the late press was inadequately supplied with information. The Sergeant had guarded the Dillard house well, for the reporters had not succeeded in reaching any member of the household.
Markham had picked up a late Sun on his way from the dining-room, and glanced through it carefully as he sipped his coffee.
“This is the first faint echo,” he commented ruefully. “I shudder to think what the morning papers will contain.”
“There’s nothing to do but bear it,” smiled Vance unfeelingly. “The moment some bright journalistic lad awakes to the robin-sparrow-arrow combination the city editors will go mad with joy, and every front page in the country will look like a Mother-Goose hoarding.”
Markham lapsed into despondency. Finally he struck the arm of his chair angrily with his fist.
“Damn it, Vance! I won’t let you inflame my imagination with this idiocy about nursery rhymes.” Then he added, with the ferocity of uncertainty: “It’s a sheer coincidence, I tell you. There simply couldn’t be anything in it.”
Vance sighed. “Convince yourself against your will; you’re of the same opinion still—to paraphrase Butler.” He reached into his pocket and took out a sheet of paper. “Putting all juvenilia to one side pro tempore, here’s an edifyin’ chronology I drew up before dinner. . . . Edifyin’? Well, it might be if we knew how to interpret it.”
Markham studied the paper for several minutes. What Vance had written down was this: