"Think it over. There is not one flaw in my argument, but the police never thought the matter out--perhaps in this case it was as well."
He had gone and left Miss Polly Burton still staring at the photograph of a pretty, gentle-looking woman, with a decided, wilful curve round the mouth, and a strange, unaccountable look in the large pathetic eyes; and the little journalist felt quite thankful that in this case the murder of Charles Lavender the bookmaker--cowardly, wicked as it was--had remained a mystery to the police and the public.
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
It was all very well for Mr. Richard Frobisher (of the _London Mail_) to cut up rough about it. Polly did not altogether blame him.
She liked him all the better for that frank outburst of manlike ill-temper which, after all said and done, was only a very flattering form of masculine jealousy.
Moreover, Polly distinctly felt guilty about the whole thing. She had promised to meet Dickie--that is Mr. Richard Frobisher--at two o'clock sharp outside the Palace Theatre, because she wanted to go to a Maud Allan _matinée_, and because he naturally wished to go with her.
But at two o'clock sharp she was still in Norfolk Street, Strand, inside an A.B.C. shop, sipping cold coffee opposite a grotesque old man who was fiddling with a bit of string.
How could she be expected to remember Maud Allan or the Palace Theatre, or Dickie himself for a matter of that? The man in the corner had begun to talk of that mysterious death on the underground railway, and Polly had lost count of time, of place, and circumstance.
She had gone to lunch quite early, for she was looking forward to the _matinée_ at the Palace.
The old scarecrow was sitting in his accustomed place when she came into the A.B.C. shop, but he had made no remark all the time that the young girl was munching her scone and butter. She was just busy thinking how rude he was not even to have said "Good morning," when an abrupt remark from him caused her to look up.
"Will you be good enough," he said suddenly, "to give me a description of the man who sat next to you just now, while you were having your cup of coffee and scone."
Involuntarily Polly turned her head towards the distant door, through which a man in a light overcoat was even now quickly passing. That man had certainly sat at the next table to hers, when she first sat down to her coffee and scone: he had finished his luncheon--whatever it was--moment ago, had paid at the desk and gone out. The incident did not appear to Polly as being of the slightest consequence.