“Well, we wouldn’t mind hearing her back history,” said Tuppence guardedly.

But Mr. Hersheimmer seemed to grow suddenly suspicious.

“See here,” he declared.  “This isn’t Sicily!  No demanding ransom or threatening to crop her ears if I refuse.  These are the British Isles, so quit the funny business, or I’ll just sing out for that beautiful big British policeman I see out there in Piccadilly.”

Tommy hastened to explain.

“We haven’t kidnapped your cousin.  On the contrary, we’re trying to find her.  We’re employed to do so.”

Mr. Hersheimmer leant back in his chair.

“Put me wise,” he said succinctly.

Tommy fell in with this demand in so far as he gave him a guarded version of the disappearance of Jane Finn, and of the possibility of her having been mixed up unawares in “some political show.”  He alluded to Tuppence and himself as “private inquiry agents” commissioned to find her, and added that they would therefore be glad of any details Mr. Hersheimmer could give them.

That gentleman nodded approval.

“I guess that’s all right.  I was just a mite hasty.  But London gets my goat!  I only know little old New York.  Just trot out your questions and I’ll answer.”

For the moment this paralysed the Young Adventurers, but Tuppence, recovering herself, plunged boldly into the breach with a reminiscence culled from detective fiction.

“When did you last see the dece—­your cousin, I mean?”

“Never seen her,” responded Mr. Hersheimmer.

“What?” demanded Tommy, astonished.

Hersheimmer turned to him.

“No, sir.  As I said before, my father and her mother were brother and sister, just as you might be”—­Tommy did not correct this view of their relationship—­“but they didn’t always get on together.  And when my aunt made up her mind to marry Amos Finn, who was a poor school teacher out West, my father was just mad!  Said if he made his pile, as he seemed in a fair way to do, she’d never see a cent of it.  Well, the upshot was that Aunt Jane went out West and we never heard from her again.

“The old man did pile it up.  He went into oil, and he went into steel, and he played a bit with railroads, and I can tell you he made Wall Street sit up!” He paused.  “Then he died—­last fall—­and I got the dollars.  Well, would you believe it, my conscience got busy!  Kept knocking me up and saying:  What abour{sic} your Aunt Jane, way out West?  It worried me some.  You see, I figured it out that Amos Finn would never make good.  He wasn’t the sort.  End of it was, I hired a man to hunt her down.  Result, she was dead, and Amos Finn was dead, but they’d left a daughter—­Jane—­who’d been torpedoed in the Lusitania on her way to Paris.  She was saved all right, but they didn’t seem able to hear of her over this side.  I guessed they weren’t hustling any, so I thought I’d come along over, and speed things up.  I phoned Scotland Yard and the Admiralty first thing.  The Admiralty rather choked me off, but Scotland Yard were very civil—­said they would make inquiries, even sent a man round this morning to get her photograph.  I’m off to Paris to-morrow, just to see what the Prefecture is doing.  I guess if I go to and fro hustling them, they ought to get busy!”