Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/50

There is no surer soporific than sleeping over a problem, no more fallacious method of attempting a solution. After murmuring to himself three times, "Let's see; there was something about watches," Mordaunt Reeves fell into a sleep which anybody but a psychoanalyst would have called dreamless. He woke in the morning with a strong resolution to do the ninth in four, which melted through lazy stages of half-awareness into the feeling that there was something else to do first. The adventures of yesterday, the duties of to-day, returned to him. He was already nearly dressed when he remembered that he had decided on the rôle of a Daily Mail reporter for his morning's investigation, and grimly set himself to remove again the bulging knickerbockers and the hypocritical garters of his kind. Dressy they might be, but they were not Fleet Street. His memories of the reporter's wardrobe were, it must be confessed, somewhat disordered, and he was greeted in the breakfast-room with flippant inquiries whether he had gone into mourning for the Unknown Passenger.

He found Gordon already at table with Marryatt⁠—Marryatt in the high clerical collar which was