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"Of kissing her husband?" asked Bill. But Miss Fraenkel's mind was fashioned in water-tight compartments. She could not switch her enthusiasm from the vote long enough to appreciate this lapse from good taste. Her mind did not work that way. We would have to begin at the beginning and lead up to kissing as a moral or immoral act, before she could give it any serious attention.
"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.
"Say," he said, "suppose we get Miss Fraenkel's opinion of the chap with the hooked nose. She's American; she'll be sure to have an opinion." "No doubt," I conceded. "We shall see whether we have not taken too much for granted. There's only one thing, and that is, are we not exposing Miss Fraenkel to temptation by exciting her curiosity yet more about her neighbour?" "Oh, bunk!" said Mac.
I was roused from the study into which this plunged me by Miss Fraenkel's interest in the catastrophe. As I bought my stamps and posted my letters she continued to discuss its possibilities. "What a story it would make!" she observed. "A thing like that coming down here, of all places, and nobody expecting it. Like Sherlock Holmes." "Very," I said. "I must try my hand at it some day."
I felt that, after all, Miss Fraenkel's crystal-clear bromidity would be a delightful change after so much intense living and introspection.
Carville's part in the tragedy of that New Year's Night. I remarked early in this narrative that Miss Fraenkel's importance in it was of the slightest. Her charming enthusiasm was ever an ignis fatuus leading her into unprofitable bye-ways of conjecture. We have, therefore, the superior position as regards the vanished family who lived next door.
Wederslen had done the one thing needful to rouse Miss Fraenkel's feelings towards her to the temperature of Bill's: she had expressed her opinion that civil servants should be debarred from political activity. In spite of my efforts, the conversation became sectional. Mac motioned me to join him on the porch for a smoke. "What do you think?" he said, when he had lighted up.
Carville per se, Miss Fraenkel's opinion of the painter-cousin's discovery would be interesting only for its novelty and irrelevance. I did not express my conviction quite as frankly as this, since my friend, though in sympathy with his wife's matrimonial plans, could not forbear to indulge in a mild hazing at my expense. I contented myself with opening the piano and pushing him into the seat.
He had set out to tell his tale in his own way and it was only right that we should permit him to do so. In one thing I agreed with Bill and differed from Mac the question of "Gladys." "So her name's 'Gladys'?" said he, when he had brought Miss Fraenkel's knowledge up to date. "Oh, no!" exclaimed Bill. "Oh, no!" "He said so," persisted her husband. "No," I said, "so far he has not mentioned Mrs.
He had a number, what was it? Was that his number during his last imprisonment? Had he spoken in terrific hyperbole when he admitted that no doubt it was "a picturesque life"? Good God! How blind we had been! And Miss Fraenkel's shot in the dark, was it after all the truth? Had he really been "held for something"?
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