Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/135

124 own doctor, Newton, they both went over the body. Stabbed in the throat. We've got the weapon, too. Sort of stiletto or dagger."

Reggie cocked an eye at the head of the Criminal Investigation Department. "Sounds Italian," he murmured.

"It is Italian."

"And Geoffrey married an Italian wife."

"An Italian singer—a singer at cafés. That's the kind she was. Yes, that's the proposition."

"Lomas, old thing, you ought to write melodramas. The diabolical Italian singer, she leapt out of the dark, she pulled a d—dagger from her stocking, and she fell upon the dear, kind old gentleman and left him weltering in his gore. Then she put the dagger down, so the gifted detective could find it, and went back to dinner."

"It is silly, isn't it?" Lomas grinned. "But there it is, don't you know?"

"I don't know," said Reggie Fortune. "I don't know anything. I was born of poor common-sensible parents, and this is all crazy. I suppose he really was stabbed?"

"You will harp on that. Go and look at him in the morning. Hang it, man, the family doctor and the divisional surgeon they ought to know if there's a hole in him or not."

"But why—why? Geoffrey—the Italian wife—they were on velvet anyway. The disappointed