"Do you think Ray Marcable suspected the truth?"
"No; I don't think so."
"Why not?"
"Because Ray Marcable is one of the most self-absorbed people in this era. In any case, she remembered the dagger from my description of it, but she had no reason to connect the man who was murdered with Sorrell, and therefore wouldn't connect her mother with the affair at all. The Yard didn't know Sorrell's identity until Monday, and that was the day she left for the States. I shall be very much surprised if she knows, even yet, that the dead man was Sorrell. I shouldn't think she reads much in the Press but the gossip column, and America isn't interested in the queue murder."
"Then there's a shock in store for her," said Barker sorrowfully.
"There is," said Grant grimly. "And at least there is a pleasant one in store for Lamont, and I'm glad of it. I have made a complete fool of myself over this case, but I'm happier just now than I have been since I hauled him into the boat from the loch."
"You're a marvel, Grant. With a case like that I should have been as pleased as Punch and all over myself. It isn't canny. If you're ever fired from the force, you can set up as something in the second-sight line at five bob a time."
"So that you can descend on me for blackmail, I suppose? 'Give us a quid or you'll have the cops in! No; there isn't anything uncanny about it. After all, in any human relationship you've got to decide for your-self, apart from evidence, what a man is like. And though I wouldn't confess it even to myself, I think I knew Lamont was telling the truth that night when he gave me his statement in the train."
"Well, it's a queer business," said Barker, " — the queerest business I've known for ages." He hoisted himself off the desk against which he had been propped. "Let me know when Mullins comes back, will you? If he has the sheath, then we'll decide to accept the story. Lamont's being brought up again tomorrow, isn't he? We can bring her into court then." And he left Grant alone.
And Grant mechanically did what he had been going to do when Barker's entrance interrupted him. He unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out the dagger and the brooch. Only a little space between the intention and the act, and what a difference! He had been going to withdraw them as the emblems of his despair — mysteries that maddened him; and now he knew all about it. And it was so simple now that he knew. Now that he knew! But if Mrs. Wallis had not come…He turned away from the thought. But for the accident that made the woman fair-minded even in her madness he would have stifled his misgivings and gone through with the case as befitted a valued inspector of the C.I.D., and in accordance with the evidence. He had been saved from that.