Several years ago, Barrison had imagined himself in love with a beautiful, heartless girl who had baffled him in one of his big cases. She had gone out of his life forever, and he had imagined himself henceforth immune. Yet this woman, with her curious paradoxes of temperament, her extraordinary frankness, and her strange reserves, her cold-blooded dismissal of a past passion, and her emotional yearning for joy and the fullness of life—well, he knew in his heart of hearts, whether he put it in words or not, that she thrilled him as no woman in the world had ever thrilled him yet. CHAPTER XX CHECKING UP “I know that the Wrenn woman probably did it,” said Barrison, speaking to Lowry in the inspector’s office. “And I’m going to move heaven and earth to find her. But I’ve a hunch—a sort of theory—that those two women, Miss Templeton and Miss Legaye, know more than they’ve told us yet.” He tried to keep himself from feeling guilty when he spoke of Grace Templeton; certainly his own reasons for particular interest in her had no place in a police investigation, and yet he became subtly embarrassed whenever her name came up. “Never,” said Lowry, smoking his large, black, bad cigar, “never have theories. Find out the situation, and build your theories into that. You started off on the idea that these two women—Templeton and Legaye—were mixed up in the business somehow. You’ve been chasing ’round, worrying about them, to make that idea good. Now, I don’t believe either of ’em knows a darned thing about it! They may both have been in love with the man, but nowadays actresses, with their futures ahead, don’t often queer themselves that way. However, if there were any evidence against either of ’em, I’d go after it fast enough. But there isn’t. In fact, there’s conclusive evidence clearing them both. There’s the pistol, for instance. Not one initial among the four belonging to the two women resembles an M.” “One moment, inspector!” broke in Barrison. “That isn’t an M, it’s a W.” “Discovered that, eh?” remarked the inspector imperturbably. “I wondered if you would. If you’ll look at the pistol closely, though, my dear boy, you’ll find that the angle at which it is engraved is a curious one. It might be either an M or a W. It depends on how you look at it. The letter is oddly shaped; looked at from different points, it makes just as good a W as it does an M, and vice versa. Well, the ladies in question have no more W’s in their names than they have M’s. Then, Miss Templeton could not have got behind the scenes in time.” “I imagine not,” admitted Jim. “Of course, we are dealing in what was possible, not likely; the door was unguarded just then, and——” “The door was unguarded after the shot, not before.” “If you believe the man Lynch. But—mind you, I suspect her no more than you, but—she was familiar with the theater.”