I remember you now; you were always like that." He grinned at me, running long fingers through his sorrel hair. "Tell me what's up while I try to fund one-syllable words to use on you."
I told him about the diamonds, and about the dead man. He looked very disappointed.
That's trivial, sordid," he complained. "I've been thinking of Leggett in terms of Dumas, and you bring me a piece of gimcrackery out of O. Henry. You've let me down—you and and your shabby diamonds. But"—his eyes brightened again—"they may lead to something. Leggett may or may not be a criminal, but there's more to him than a two-penny insurance swindle."
"You mean," I asked sarcastically, "that he's one of these master minds? So you've been reading newspapers? What do you think he is? King of the bootleggers? Chief of an international crime syndicate? A white slave magnate? Head of a dope ring? Or maybe queen of the counterfeiters in disguise?"
"Don't be an idiot. He's got brains, that man, and there's something black in him. There's something he doesn't want to think about. I've told you that he revels in ail that's dizziest in thought, yet he's intellectually as cold as a fish, but with a bitter-dry coldness. He's neurotic, yet he doesn't even smoke. He keeps his body sensitive and fit and ready—for what?—while he drugs his mind against memory with the wildest of intellectual lunacies, with ideas that belong to the mad. Yet the man is cold and sane.
"There's only one explanation: there's darkness in his past that he wants to forget. But why shouldn't he anesthetize his mind through his body, by sensuality if not by drugs? There's still only one explanation; the darkness in his past is not dead, and he must keep himself fit to cope with it should it come into the present."
"All right. What t is it?"
"If I don't know—and I don't—it isn't because I haven't tried to learn; but try getting information out of Leggett some time. I don't believe that's his name."
"No?
"No," Fitzstephan said, "he's French. I'd risk anything on it. He told me once that he came from Atlanta, but he's French in outlook, in quality of mind, in everything but admission."
"What of the rest of the family ? The daughter's cuckoo, isn't she."
"I wonder," Fitzstephan looked queerly at me, "Are you saying that carelessly, or do you really think she's off?"
"I don't know, but she's odd." She's got animal ears and almost no forehead, eyes change PR from green to brown. An uncomfortable sort of person."
"If you're cataloging her physical peculiarities you can add that her upper thumb joints—between metacarpal bones and first phalanx—don't work."
"I'm not. In your snooping around have you been able to pry into any of her affairs?"
"Are you—who make your living snooping and prying—sneering at my curiosity about people and my attempts to satisfy it?"
"We're different," I said, "I do mine with the object of putting people in jail, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should."
"That's not different," he said, "I do mine with the object of putting people in books, and I get paid for it, and not as much as I should. Gabrielle hates her father. He worships her."
"Howcome the hate?"
Fitzstephan shrugged his lean shoulders; said:
"I don't know. Perhaps because worships her."
"There's no sense to that," I growled. "You're just being literary. How about Mrs. Leggett?"
"You've never eaten one of her meals, I suppose? You'd have no doubts about her if you had. None but a serene sane soul ever achieved such cook-
