I assure you it is only a scratch. In fact," I
groaned, "nobody could hurt my head; it is too solid. It must be ivory.
If I had had a vestige of intelligence, an iota of it, the palest
glimmer, I should have known from the beginning exactly who these
fellows were!"
She was sitting beside me now, bending forward, all consoling eagerness.
"That is ridiculous!" she declared. "How could you guess?"
"Easily enough," I murmured. "I had all the clues at Gibraltar. Why,
yesterday, on my way to your house in the rue St.-Dominique, I went over
the whole case in the taxi, and still I didn't see. I let the fellow
confide in me on the ship and warn me on the train and give me a final
solemn ultimatum at the inn last night and come on here to frighten you
and threaten you--when just a word to the police would have settled
him forever. By George, I can't believe it! I should take a prize at an
idiot show."
She laughed unsteadily.
"I don't see that," she answered. "Why should you have suspected him
when even the authorities didn't guess? You are not a detective.
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