He nodded meditatively. "Yet I like to imagine how Monsieur Lecoq would approach it. Would he believe it was a murder simply because it so appeared? Has it occurred to you that Mees Holladay truly might have visited her father, and that his death was not a murder at all, but an accident?" "An accident?" I repeated. "How could it be an accident? How could a man be stabbed accidentally in the neck? Besides, even if it were an accident, how would that explain his daughter's rushing from the building without trying to save him, without giving the alarm? If it wasn't a murder, why should the woman, whoever she was, be frightened? How else can you explain her flight?" He was looking at me thoughtfully. "All that you say is ver' true," he said. "It shows that you have given to the case much thought. I believe that you also have a fondness for crimes of mystery," and he smiled at me. "Is it not so, Mistair Lester?" "I had never suspected it," I laughed, "until this case came up, but the microbe seems to have bitten me." "Ah, yes," he said doubtfully, not quite understanding. "And I've rather fancied at times," I admitted, "that I should like to take a hand at solving it--though, of course, I never shall. Our connection with the case is ended." He shot me a quick glance, then lighted another cigarette. "Suppose it were assigned to you to solve it," he asked, "how would you set about it?" "I'd try to find the mysterious woman." "But the police, so I understand, attempted that and failed," he objected. "How could you succeed?" "Oh, I dare say I shouldn't succeed," I laughed, his air striking me as a little more earnest than the occasion demanded. "I should probably fail, just as the police did." "In France," he remarked, "it is not in the least expected that men of the law should----" "Nor is it here," I explained. "Only, of course, a lawyer can't help it, sometimes; some cases demand more or less detective work, and are yet too delicate to be intrusted to the police." "It is also the fault of our police that it is too fond of the newspapers, of posing before the public--it is a fault of human nature, is it not?" "You speak English so well, Mr. Martigny," I said, "that I have wondered where you learned it." "I was some years in England--the business of wine--and devoted myself seriously to the study of the language. But I still find it sometimes very difficult to understand you Americans--you speak so much more rapidly than the English, and so much less distinctly. You have a way of running your words together, of dropping whole syllables----" "Yes," I smiled, "and that is the very thing we complain of in the French." "Oh, our elisions are governed by well-defined laws which each one comprehends, while here----" "Every man is a law unto himself. Remember, it is the land of the free----" "And the home of the license, is it not?" he added, unconscious of irony.