No one can give the faintest description of the mysterious man who alone could have committed that clever deed, and the police are playing a game of blind man's buff." "But you must have formed some theory of your own," she persisted.
It annoyed her that the funny creature was obstinate about this point, and she tried to nettle his vanity.
"I suppose that as a matter of fact your original remark that 'there are no such things as mysteries' does not apply universally.

There is a mystery--that of the death in Percy Street, and you, like the police, are unable to fathom it." He pulled up his eyebrows and looked at her for a minute or two.
"Confess that that murder was one of the cleverest bits of work accomplished outside Russian diplomacy," he said with a nervous laugh.
"I must say that were I the judge, called upon to pronounce sentence of death on the man who conceived that murder, I could not bring myself to do it.

I would politely request the gentleman to enter our Foreign Office--we have need of such men.

The whole _mise en scene_ was truly artistic, worthy of its _milieu_--the Rubens Studios in Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road.
"Have you ever noticed them?
They are only studios by name, and are merely a set of rooms in a corner house, with the windows slightly enlarged, and the rents charged accordingly in consideration of that additional five inches of smoky daylight, filtering through dusty windows.

On the ground floor there is the order office of some stained glass works, with a workshop in the rear, and on the first floor landing a small room allotted to the caretaker, with gas, coal, and fifteen shillings a week, for which princely income she is deputed to keep tidy and clean the general aspect of the house.
"Mrs.Owen, who was the caretaker there, was a quiet, respectable woman, who eked out her scanty wages by sundry--mostly very meagre--tips doled out to her by impecunious artists in exchange for promiscuous domestic services in and about the respective studios.
"But if Mrs.Owen's earnings were not large, they were very regular, and she had no fastidious tastes.