“A very complimentary picture you draw of him.”

“If I wrote what I thought about him, I could be arrested for sending it through the mails.  Goodness knows, no husband at all is a hundred per cent better than a man like that.  Not that he beats Naomi.  Fact is, I’d think he was more human if he did.  Only time I ever like him is when he flies up in a rage.  He swears simply elegantly!”

“Indeed?”

“I love it.  And I don’t think it’s wicked to love swearing, do you?  I was reading in a book once something about swearing being a perfectly natural mental reaction, or something—­like a safety-valve on a steam-engine.  If the engine didn’t have the safety-valve, it would blow up.  So if it’s true that swearing is like that, then there can’t be any harm in it; because anything that keeps a person from blowing up must be pretty good, don’t you think?”

“It does sound reasonable.”

“Not that I swear myself—­not out loud, anyway, but sometimes, when I’m right peeved at Gerald or Naomi or somebody, I get in my room and say swear-words right out loud.  And I feel ever so much better for it!”

The conversation languished while she again attacked the sundae.  Carroll spoke: 

“Have you seen your friend, Miss Gresham, lately?”

“Hazel?  I’ll say I have—­although she’s horribly weepy since poor Roland was killed.  Of course, I’m not heartless or anything like that; but what’s the use of crying all the time when there are just as good fish in the sea as ever were caught?  I told her that, but it don’t seem to do a single bit of good.  She just keeps saying, ‘Poor Roland is dead,’ just as if I didn’t know it as well as she does—­him having been crazy about me even before he was about her.  I’m sort of afraid it’s gone to the poor girl’s head.  She’s simply horribly upset!”

“That’s not unnatural, is it?”

“No-o, I suppose not; but it’s terribly old-fashioned.”

“Does she—­discuss the affair much?”

“All the time.”

“What does she think about the woman in the taxicab?”

“You mean the woman who killed him?”

“Yes.”

“Well!” positively.  “If I was that woman, I’d hate to meet Hazel Gresham—­if Hazel knew it!”

“But she has no suspicion of any certain person?”

“Goodness, no!  How could she have?  Of course, we agreed that it was some vampire; but we can’t decide which one.  Most of the women we know don’t go in for killing men; and a heap of them are married, anyway.”

“Anyway?”

“Yes.  You wouldn’t expect a nice chap like Roland to be eloping with a married woman, would you?  Not in real life?”

Carroll with difficulty concealed a smile.  The girl was a refreshing mixture of world-old wisdom and almost childish innocence.  She was a type new to him, and, as such, absorbingly interesting.

“How about Miss Gresham’s brother?” he inquired idly.  “How does he take it?”