"He must be a very interesting man, don't you think?"
"Surely! Oh, I should give anything to see his home. You've described it to me, so I know all about it. Gainsborough landscape, and red tiles on the cottages!" She clasped her hands.
"I mean the man my cousin met," said Bill, gently. "Carville."
"Oh, him!" Miss Fraenkel looked at each of us for an instant to catch some inkling of our behaviour.
"Same name as——" and Mac jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
Miss Fraenkel's face did not clear.
"We thought," I said heavily, "that this man in England, you know, might have——" I stopped, dismayed by her lack of appreciation. She seemed unable to grasp the simple links of our brilliant theory. We had omitted to calculate upon the indifference of the modern American temperament to names. A foul murder had been committed a short time back by a gambler named Fraenkel, yet she would have laughed at the suggestion that such a coincidence should cause her any annoyance.
"I don't get it," she said, smiling, and we saw plainly enough that she did not get it. We were crushed. I explained in more detail the reason for which we had ventured to connect the two stories. We could see her trying to understand.
"You mean—just as if it was a photo-play," she faltered.
It does not matter now, and I admit that this put me out of humour. And yet it was true. We were really no nearer an actual and bona fide solution of Mrs. Carville's story than if we had simply tried to make, as Miss Fraenkel said, a photo-play. The others laughed at my downcast countenance.