Polly thought to herself that she had never seen any one so pale,
so thin, with such funny light-coloured hair, brushed very smoothly
across the top of a very obviously bald crown. He looked so timid and
nervous as he fidgeted incessantly with a piece of string; his long,
lean, and trembling fingers tying and untying it into knots of wonderful
and complicated proportions.
Having carefully studied every detail of the quaint personality Polly
felt more amiable.
"And yet," she remarked kindly but authoritatively, "this article, in an
otherwise well-informed journal, will tell you that, even within the
last year, no fewer than six crimes have completely baffled the police,
and the perpetrators of them are still at large."
"Pardon me," he said gently, "I never for a moment ventured to suggest
that there were no mysteries to the _police_; I merely remarked that
there were none where intelligence was brought to bear upon the
investigation of crime."
"Not even in the Fenchurch Street _mystery_. I suppose," she asked
sarcastically.
"Least of all in the so-called Fenchurch Street _mystery_," he replied
quietly.
Now the Fenchurch Street mystery, as that extraordinary crime had
popularly been called, had puzzled--as Polly well knew--the brains of
every thinking man and woman for the last twelve months.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25