"Some of them," I replied.
"They have got my name in already," she continued, "and my photograph
appears in one. It is outrageous how they leap at an opportunity for
scandal."
"It will all be cleared up," I said, speaking with as much confidence
as I had at my command. "You know and I know that Coverly is innocent
and I don't believe that Gatton thinks him guilty."
A while longer we talked and then I returned rather wearily to my
chair in the room where the air was still laden with tobacco fumes.
Without believing it to contain any very special significance as I had
supposed, but merely attracted by the strangeness of the passage, I
remembered how Gatton had harped upon Maspero's description of the
attributes of Bast. "Sometimes she plays with her victim as with a
mouse," etc. The big book with its fine plates, several of them
representing cats similar to that which Gatton had left behind for my
more particular examination, still lay open upon the table, and I
reread those passages appertaining to the character of the
cat-goddess, which I had marked for Gatton's information. Scarce
noting what I read--for all the time I was turning over in my mind the
manifold problems of the case--I sat there for an hour perhaps, in
fact until I was interrupted by the entrance of Coates.
"Shall you require me again to-night, sir?" he inquired.
"No," I replied; "you had better turn in now, as in all probability we
shall be early afoot to-morrow, Coates.
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