A few days later Reggie Fortune drove into Tormouth, liked it, liked its hotel, and called on the Hon. Evelyn Lomas. Miss Lomas was her brother’s sister in face and shape, correctly handsome, slight, dapper, not the least like her brother in manner. She was frankly middle-aged, brisk and direct. “So glad you could spare time, Mr. Fortune.” She sat down to her writing-table. “My brother tells me I can have every confidence in your discretion.” “So good of him,” Reggie murmured. He was annoyed with Lomas. He had meant only to make friends with the good lady. It appeared that he was to be an official investigator of the silly girls’ school mystery. An embarrassing position. And Miss Lomas was visibly without humour. “You will understand that discretion is essential in this case, Mr. Fortune. Anything in the nature of publicity would be unpardonable. You look very young.” “I try to be,” Reggie said modestly. Miss Lomas coughed. “These are the facts, Mr. Fortune.” With minute and tiresome detail Reggie heard it all over again and learnt nothing new. One mistress’s room turned upside down in the night, nothing spoilt or taken--an interval--another mistress’s room turned upside down and a number of photographs of girls taken. Only that and nothing more. Reggie was bored, and let his eyes wander from the intensity of Miss Lomas. When at last she stopped, frowning at his lack of attention, and waited in angry majesty for him to say something-- “Are you interested in archaeology?” was what he said. “I beg your pardon,” said Miss Lomas, in an awful voice. “I was wonderin’ about this,” Reggie murmured, and took up from her table a little yellowish thing modelled into something like the shape of a woman. “Fascinatin’, isn’t she?” “It seems to me childish or disgusting, Mr. Fortune,” Miss Lomas snapped at him. “It has nothing to do with the case. But I am afraid my affairs merely amuse you, Mr. Fortune.” “Oh, please, please,” Reggie protested. “You see, you’re so lucid, Miss Lomas. These odd affairs are hardly ever lucid. Anything may have to do with anything. Just consider. You tell me that in your school there has been happening something unusual.” “Extraordinary, unprecedented, and disturbing,” Miss Lomas cried. “And then I find this lyin’ about--a Hottentot Venus in a girls’ school--that’s very highly unusual.” “The thing is just a little ivory idol,” said Miss Lomas and took it from him and looked at it with disgust. It was crudely and oddly shaped, like a child’s modelling. “It’s not ivory, and probably it wasn’t an idol,” Reggie snapped. His excellent temper found Miss Lomas trying. “It’s a horse’s tooth, and was no doubt carved as a doll or a work of art. But how did it come into a girls’ school?”