Mme. Storey, Inspector Rumsey and I had dinner in a little Italian restaurant on Fifty-Second Street where the spaghetti with anchovies is something to dream about. We all felt the blessed sense of relaxation that follows on the completion of a tough bit of work. It was fun to hold a sort of post-mortem on the case.
Mme. Storey said: “The first thing that struck me was that Ram Lal was a stupid fellow playing a clever part. Particularly after I got his history from the police. Before the Ram Lal episode he was nothing but a sneak thief, the lowest order of crooks. This suggested that he must have been drilled in the art of crystal-gazing. His whole spiel sounded like something learned by rote.
“When I watched Mrs. Bracker and Cushack and read the transcript of their examination by the po
