Mr. Fortune found Lomas with Superintendent Bell. They lay back in their chairs and looked at him. Lomas started up, came to him and walked round him, eyeglass up.
“What is this?” said Mr. Fortune. “Dumb crambo?”
“Admiration,” Lomas sighed. “Reverence. Awe. How do you do these things, Fortune? You look only human, not to say childlike. Yet you have us all beat. You arrive while we’re still looking for the way.”
“I wouldn’t have said it was a case for Mr. Fortune, either,” said Bell.
“No flowers, by request. Don’t be an owl, Lomas. Who is Kuyper?”
Lomas sat down again. “I hoped you were going to tell us that,” he said. “What in the world made you go for Kuyper?”
“He calls himself Dutch and so did Witt. He deals in jewels and so did Witt. And I fancy he set the ‘Daily Watchman’ howling that Wilton must stay in prison.”
“And if you will kindly make sense of that for me I shall be obliged,” said Lomas.
“It doesn’t make sense. I know that. Hang it all, you must do something for yourselves. Justify your existence, Lomas. Who is Kuyper?”
“The political branch have had their eye on him for some time. He’s been selling off Russian jewels. They believe he’s a Bolshevik.”
“No. The connexion of Wilton with Bolshevism isn’t what you’d call obvious. I did think you were hunting the wild, wild goose, Reginald. All my apologies. None of our men recognized Kuyper. But one of them did recognize Mr. Witt. Mr. Witt is now something in Kuyper’s office. Marvellous, Reginald. How do you do it?”
“My head,” said Reggie Fortune. “Oh, my head! Kuyper’s a Bolshevik agent and Kuyper employs a man to put Wilton out of the way. It’s a bad dream.”
“Yes, it’s not plausible. Not one of your more lucid cases, Fortune.”
“I had thought,” said Bell diffidently, “if Dr. Wilton happened to get to know of some Bolshevik plot, Mr. Fortune, they would be wanting to put him out.”
“They would--in a novel,” Reggie shook his head. “But hang it all, Wilton don’t know that he ever knew anything.”
“P’r’aps he’s a bit of a Bolshevik himself, sir,” said Bell.
Lomas laughed. “Bell has a turn for melodrama.”
“Yes. Yes, there is a lot of melodrama in the world. But somehow I don’t fancy Kuyper, Witt and Co. play it. I think I’ll go and have a little talk with the firm.”