Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/168

Rh "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