Affection for her had survived his schooldays. His respect for her character and his appreciation of the quality of her mind increased steadily with the years which had from time to time brought them to close quarters over some case on which they were both professionally engaged. But there were moments when he found her faculty for suddenly giving a case some completely new turn very exasperating to the natural man. He had no desire, of course, to round off a case by ignoring an inconvenient fact, but Miss Silver’s talent for producing inconvenient facts was sometimes felt to be excessive. He came out of Myra Constantine’s sitting-room a good deal disturbed. Now, in what had been Lewis Brading’s study, he gazed at Miss Silver and said, “Look here, is all this on the level?” Miss Silver was knitting placidly. These little pink vests were for her niece Dorothy’s second child—a niece by marriage, and the wife of Ethel Burkett’s brother.
