Page:Richardson - 2835 Mayfair (1907).djvu/20

14 Carefully the barrister examined the spectacles. He placed them on his nose. Then he whistled.

"These are a woman's spectacles," he said. "I am almost sure of that. They are too small for a man's face. And the extraordinary thing about them is that they are plain glass, practically plain window-glass. Now what has he got these here for? How did a pair of woman's spectacles of plain glass come into the possession of an eminent medical man?"

"I don't know, Harding. I've never seen them before. I suppose he brought them here."

"But why, in Heaven's name?" queried Harding. "A woman does not give away a common pair of steel spectacles as a gage d'amour. You noticed they were open when I found them, as though they had just been taken off the owner's nose."

"Well, what do you make of it?" The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. "Make of it? I don't make anything of it, at all."

He affected an air of joviality.

"But I tell you what it is, Reggie. When Clifford comes home we will have you put away in an asylum for the term of your natural life. A man who comes to one's house late at night with cock-and-bull stories of corpses on carpets is not needed; there is no market for him. Now I'm going home."

Reggie, as he let him out, asked: "Do you really think that he's not dead?"

"The only conclusion to which I have come is