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I had been engaged on the work at the time the case of Eva Wilkinson had cropped up, my investigations had prevented my accompanying Quarles and Zena to Devonshire. He would be the first to deny that he had any part in solving these problems.
"You mean that " "It is impossible!" Zena exclaimed. "It is not a very difficult matter to treat a body so as to preserve it, but to cover it with a preparation and with such precision that when it is set you shall see nothing but a stone figure is, of course, only possible to an artist." "But she had sat for him, the figure must have been far advanced before before she disappeared."
Had I not taken Christopher Quarles and Zena to the Regency one evening I should probably never have known anything further of the contessa, but it so happened that the professor was very much attracted by her. He went to the Regency three times in one week to study the inward significance of her dances, he declared.
"Why not to-morrow?" "To-morrow I am busy. Did you know I was writing an article for a psychological review?" On the following evening I took Zena to a theater to the Olympic. I suppose I chose the Olympic with a sort of idea that I was keeping in touch with the case I had in hand, that if any one chanced to see me there they would conclude that I was following up some clue.
"Or the first," said Zena quickly. "Jealousy is a most usual motive for crime." "I think the child strikes a true note there, Wigan," said Quarles. "We must keep the idea of jealousy before us that is, if we are compelled to believe there has been foul play. Now, one would have expected Sir Charles to telephone to madame; that he did not do so is strange."
"Whether they will realize what it is that is disclosed where that piece is missing is another matter, but we know, Wigan. It is the body of Madame Vatrotski. Can you wonder, my dear Zena, that I felt more like a little brandy and water than tea?" How far Quarles was right in his idea of the relations between Forbes and the dancer no one will ever know.
It is hateful to feel that there is nothing to be done, more hateful still that people should imagine you are beaten or are neglecting your work. Zena told me the professor had been out all day, but she did not know what business he was about. He was certainly not engaged in writing his article.
Just imagine him meeting Jim Eliot and treating him like a druggist merely because he ran a drug store! or speaking to Jefferson Thorpe as if he were a barber simply because he shaved for money! Why, a man like that could ruin young Pupkin in Mariposa in half a day, and Pupkin knew it. That wouldn't matter so much, but think of the Pepperleighs and Zena! Everything would be over with them at once.
Gallagher's house, the Mariposa Tennis Club rent it, you remember, for fifty cents a month, and Pupkin used to perform perfect prodigies of valour, leaping in the air to serve with his little body hooked like a letter S. Sometimes, too, they went out on Lake Wissanotti in the evening in Pupkin's canoe, with Zena sitting in the bow and Pupkin paddling in the stern and they went out ever so far and it was after dark and the stars were shining before they came home.
How I came to be spending my time under such enviable circumstances requires some explanation, especially when I state that the exceedingly pretty woman was not Zena Quarles.
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