«All right,» said Parker, «stop talking. I believe you.»
He went on to detail the medical evidence.
«By the way,» said Lord Peter, «to skip across for a moment to the other case, has it occurred to you that perhaps Levy was going out to see Freke on Monday night?»
«He was; he did,» said Parker, rather unexpectedly, and proceeded to recount his interview with the nerve-specialist.
«Humph!» said Lord Peter. «I say, Parker, these are funny cases, ain't they? Every line of enquiry seems to peter out. It's awfully exciting up to a point, you know, and then nothing comes of it. It's like rivers getting lost in the sand.»
«Yes,» said Parker. «And there's another one I lost this morning.»
«What's that?»
«Oh, I was pumping Levy's secretary about his business. I couldn't get much that seemed important except further details about the Argentine and so on. Then I thought I'd just ask 'round in the City about those Peruvian Oil shares, but Levy hadn't even heard of them, so far as I could make out. I routed out the brokers, and found a lot of mystery and concealment, as one always does, you know, when somebody's been rigging the market, and at last I found one name at the back of it. But it wasn't Levy's.»
«No? Whose was it?»
«Oddly enough, Freke's. It seems mysterious. He bought a lot of shares last week, in a secret kind of way, a few of them in his own name, and then quietly sold 'em out on Tuesday at a small profit — a few hundreds, not worth going to all that trouble about, you wouldn't think.»