“Oh, indeed,” said Ada, and added witheringly. “I’m sorry I’m so late.” She was frowning with exasperation, but her expression soon cleared. She leaned forward, earnest as a woman could be, looking fresh and lovely.

Rollison wondered if her earnestness explained why no one had yet married her. More likely she was trying to make sure that no one married her for her millions.

“Rolly, I know Jimmy Jones quite well,” she said. “He’s one of the best of the younger men at the firm, and we’ve been letting him have an insight into all the departments, although he doesn’t know why yet. Reggie thinks he can become really good, if he recovers.”

“He will.”

Will he really be quite all right again?” Ada asked, intently. “Or will it affect him for the rest of his life? I’ve been studying some of the reports of this kind of beating up, and in several cases the victims have become almost simple.”

“I don’t think you need worry about Jones,” said Rollison reassuringly. “I’ve a contact at the hospital who says that he’ll recover completely. His chief trouble will be resisting the desire to get his own back.”

“Well, I wouldn’t blame him,” Ada said, and went on abruptly: “Why didn’t you expect Superintendent Grice to find the two men?”

It was like Ada Jepson to go straight to the heart of a matter, without hesitation and without fencing, to see the significance of every question or comment; one had to get up very early to fool Ada.

Rollison was as frank as she deserved.

“If this had been an ordinary beating up, robbery with violence, Grice wouldn’t have been called in. You at Jepsons might have pulled some strings at the Yard to get a Superintendent, but Grice was on the job before you’d had time to—probably before you knew what had happened. So it wasn’t ordinary robbery with violence. Nor was it the first of its kind.