Mallalieu drank the steaming glass of spirits and water which Miss Pett presently brought him, and took her advice about going to bed. Without ever knowing anything about it he fell into such a slumber as he had never known in his life before. It was indeed so sound that he never heard Miss Pett steal into his room, was not aware that she carefully withdrew the precious waistcoat which, through a convenient hole in the wall, she had watched him deposit under the rest of his garments on the chair at his side, never knew that she carried it away into the living-room on the other side of the cottage. For the strong flavour of the lemon and the sweetness of the sugar which Miss Pett had put into the hot toddy had utterly obscured the very slight taste of something else which she had put in—something which was much stronger than the generous dose of whisky, and was calculated to plunge Mallalieu into a stupor from which not even an earthquake could have roused him.
Miss Pett examined the waistcoat at her leisure. Her thin fingers went through every pocket and every paper, through the banknotes, the scrip, the shares, the securities. She put everything back in its place, after a careful reckoning and estimation of the whole. And Mallalieu was as deeply plunged in his slumbers as ever when she went back into his room with her shaded light and her catlike tread, and she replaced the garment exactly where she found it, and went out and shut the door as lightly as a butterfly folds its wings.
It was then eleven o’clock at night, and Miss Pett, instead of retiring to her bed, sat down by the living-room fire and waited. The poke bonnet had been replaced by the gay turban, and under its gold and scarlet her strange, skeleton-like face gleamed like old ivory as she sat there with the firelight playing on it. And so immobile was she, sitting with her sinewy skin-and-bone arms lying folded over her silk apron, that she might have been taken for an image rather than for a living woman.
But as the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece neared midnight, Miss Pett suddenly moved. Her sharp ears caught a scratching sound on the shutter outside the window. And noiselessly she moved down the passage, and noiselessly unbarred the front door, and just as noiselessly closed it again behind the man who slipped in—Christopher, her nephew.
XXIV
Strict Business Lines
Mr. Christopher Pett, warned by the uplifted finger of his aunt, tiptoed into the living-room, and setting down his small travelling bag on the table proceeded to divest himself of a thick overcoat, a warm muffler, woollen gloves, and a silk hat. And Miss Pett, having closed the outer and inner doors, came in and glanced inquiringly at him.
“Which way did you come, this time?” she inquired.
“High Gill,” replied Christopher. “Got an afternoon express that stopped there. Jolly cold it was crossing those moors of yours, too, I can tell you!—I can do with a drop of something. I say—is there anything afoot about here?—anything going on?”
“Why?” asked Miss Pett, producing the whisky and the lemons. “And how do you mean?”
Christopher pulled an easy chair to the fire and stretched his hands to the blaze.
“Up there, on the moor,” he answered. “There’s fellows going about with lights—lanterns, I should say. I didn’t see ’em close at hand—there were several of ’em crossing about—like fireflies—as if the chaps who carried ’em were searching for something.”
Miss Pett set the decanter and the materials for toddy on the table at her nephew’s side, and took a covered plate from the cupboard in the corner.
“Them’s potted meat sandwiches,” she said. “Very toothsome you’ll find ’em—I didn’t prepare much, for I knew you’d get your dinner on the train. Yes, well, there is something afoot—they are searching. Not for something, though, but for somebody. Mallalieu!”
Christopher, his mouth full of sandwiches, and his hand laid on the decanter, lifted a face full of new and alert interest.
“The Mayor!” he exclaimed.
“Quite so,” assented Miss Pett. “Anthony Mallalieu, Esquire, Mayor of Highmarket. They want him, does the police—bad!”
Christopher still remained transfixed. The decanter was already tilted in his hand, but he tilted it no further; the sandwich hung bulging in his cheek.
“Good Lord!” he said. “Not for—” he paused, nodding his head towards the front of the cottage where the wood lay “—not for—that? They ain’t suspicioning him?”
“No, but for killing his clerk, who’d found something out,” replied Miss Pett. “The clerk was killed Sunday; they took up Mallalieu and his partner today, and tried ’em, and Mallalieu slipped the police somehow, after the case was adjourned, and escaped. And—he’s here!”
Christopher had begun to pour the whisky into his glass. In his astonishment he rattled the decanter against the rim.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Here? In this cottage?”
“In there,” answered Miss Pett. “In Kitely’s room. Safe and sound. There’s no danger. He’ll not wake. I mixed him a glass of toddy before he went to bed, and neither earthquakes nor fire-alarms ’ull wake him before nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Whew!” said Christopher. “Um! it’s a dangerous game—it’s harbouring, you know. However, they’d suspect that he’d come here. Whatever made him come here?”
“I made him come here,” replied Miss Pett. “I caught him in the wood outside there, as I was coming back from the Town Hall, so I made him come in. It’ll pay very well, Chris.”
Mr. Pett, who was lifting his glass to his lips, arrested it in midair, winked over its rim at his aunt, and smiled knowingly.
“You’re a good hand at business, I must say, old lady!” he remarked admiringly. “Of course, of course, if you’re doing a bit of business out of it—”
“That’ll come tomorrow,” said Miss Pett, seating herself at the table and glancing at her nephew’s bag. “We’ll do our own business tonight. Well,
