A short and ironical grunt answered her.  Mr. Black was not always the pink of politeness even in the presence of ladies.

“Most interesting,” he commented sarcastically.  “The squeak you heard was probably the protest of the bed you were reclining on against such a misuse of the opportunities it offered you.  A dream listened to as evidence in this office!  You must have a woman’s idea of the value of my time.”

Flushing with discomfiture, she attempted to apologise, when he cut her short.  “Nevertheless, you shall see the stick if it is still to be found.  I will take you to Police Headquarters if you will go heavily veiled.  We don’t want any recognition of you there yet.”

“You will take me—­”

“The fact that I never go there may make my visit not unwelcome.  I’ll do it; yes, I’ll do it.”

“Mr. Black, you are very good.  How soon—­”

“Now,” he announced, jumping up to get his hat.  “A woman who can take up a man’s time, with poetry and dreams, might as well have the whole afternoon.  Are you ready?  Shall we go?”

All alacrity, in spite of the irony of his bow and smile, he stood at the door waiting for her to follow him.  This she did slowly and with manifest hesitation.  She did not understand the man.  People often said of her that she did not understand her own charm.

There was one little fact of which Mr. Black was ignorant;—­that the police had had their eye on the veiled lady at Claymore Inn for several days now and knew who his companion was the instant they stepped into Headquarters.  In vain his plausible excuses for showing his lady friend the curiosities of the place; her interest in the details of criminology was well understood by Sergeant Doolittle, though of course he had not sounded its full depths, and could not know from any one but Judge Ostrander himself, her grave reasons for steeping her mind again in the horrors of her husband’s long-since expiated crime.  And Judge Ostrander was the last man who would be likely to give him this information.

Therefore, when he saw the small, mocking eye of the lawyer begin to roam over the shelves, and beheld his jaw drop as it sometimes did when he sought to veil his purpose in an air of mild preoccupation, he knew what the next request would be, as well as if the low sounds which left Mr. Black’s lips at intervals had been words instead of inarticulate grunts.  He was, therefore, prepared when the question did come.

“Any memorial of the Etheridge case?”

“Nothing but a stick with blood-marks on it.  That, I’m afraid, wouldn’t be a very agreeable sight for a lady’s eye.”

“She’s proof,” the lawyer whispered in the officer’s ear.  “Let’s see the stick.”

The sergeant considered this a very interesting experience—­quite a jolly break in the dull monotony of the day.  Hunting up the stick, he laid it in the lawyer’s hands, and then turned his eye upon the lady.