I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of intense chagrin had come upon his clear-cut features.  Failure in the slightest point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.

“Did you say your three daughters?” he asked of the Virginia gentleman.

“Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in Fairfax County,” was the answer.

With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.

Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.

“One moment, sir,” he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone detected the anxiety—­“am I not right in believing that one of the young ladies is an adopted daughter?”

“You are, suh,” admitted the major, from the ground, “but how the devil you knew it, suh, is mo’ than I can tell.”

“And mo’ than I can tell, too,” I said, as the car went on.

Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he invited me into a cafe, promising to reveal the process of his latest wonderful feat.

“In the first place,” he began after we were comfortably seated, “I knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he did not rise and give them his seat.  I decided from his appearance that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.

“Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly, impelled to do so.  I very quickly decided upon that.  I noticed that one of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil.  Also upon both of his patent leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals cut off square at one end.

“Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort—­and that is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth Avenue south of there.  I knew from the imprints of trampling French heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that he had been in conflict with the amazonian troops.  And as he was a man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk.  Therefore, when he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had received was sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of his traditions of Southern chivalry.”

“That is all very well,” I said, “but why did you insist upon daughters—­and especially two daughters?  Why couldn’t a wife alone have taken him shopping?”

“There had to be daughters,” said Jolnes, calmly.  “If he had only a wife, and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going alone.  If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone.  So there you are.”