“Where is he now?” asked Leon.
“Devizes Gaol, he’s gone there for his discharge. He’ll be out in two months.”
“And then he’ll come straight to you, you think?”
She shook her head.
“Not he,” she said bitterly. “That ain’t his way. You don’t know him, Mr. Lucas. But nobody does know him like I do. If he’d come straight to me it’d be all right, but he’s not that kind. He’s going to kill me, I tell you, and I don’t care how soon it comes. He wasn’t called Bash Jones for nothing. I’ll get it all right!” she nodded grimly. “He’ll just walk into the room and bash me without a word and that’ll be the end of Amelia Jones. But I don’t mind, I don’t mind,” she repeated. “It’s the other that’s breaking my heart and has been all the time.”
He knew it was useless to try to persuade her to tell her troubles, and at closing time they left the bar together.
“I’d ask you home only that might make it worse, and I don’t want to get you into any kind of bother, Mr. Lucas,” she said.
He offered his hand. It was the first time he had done so, and she took it in her big limp palm and shook it feebly.
“Very few people have shaken hands with Amelia Jones,” thought Gonsalez, and he went back to the flat in Jermyn Street to find Manfred asleep before the fire.
He was waiting at Paddington Station the next morning in a suit a little less shabby, and to his surprise Mrs. Jones appeared dressed in better taste than he could have imagined was possible. Her clothes were plain but they effectively disguised the class to which she belonged. She took the tickets for Swindon and there was little conversation on the journey. Obviously she did not intend to unburden her mind as yet.
The train was held up at Newbury whilst a slow up-train shunted to allow a school special to pass. It was crowded with boys and girls who waved a cheery and promiscuous greeting as they passed.
“Of course!” nodded Leon. “It is the beginning of the Easter holidays. I had forgotten.”
At Swindon they alighted and then for the first time the woman gave some indication as to the object of their journey.
“We’ve got to stay on this platform,” she said nervously. “I’m expecting to see somebody, and I’d like you to see her, too, Mr. Lucas.”
Presently another special ran into the station and the majority of the passengers in this train also were children. Several alighted at the junction, apparently to change for some other destination than London, and Leon was talking to the woman, who he knew was not listening, when he saw her face light up. She left him with a little gasp and walked quickly along the platform to greet a tall, pretty girl wearing the crimson and white hat-ribbon of a famous West of England school.
“Why, Mrs. Jones, it is so kind of you to come down to see me. I wish you wouldn’t take so much trouble. I should be only too happy to come to London,” she laughed. “Is this a friend of yours?”
She shook hands with Leon, her eyes smiling her friendliness.
“It’s all right, Miss Grace,” said Mrs. Jones, agitated. “I just thought I’d pop down and have a look at you. How are you getting on at school, miss?”
“Oh, splendidly,” said the girl. “I’ve won a scholarship.”
“Isn’t that lovely!” said Mrs. Jones in an awestricken voice. “You always was wonderful, my dear.”
The girl turned to Leon.
“Mrs. Jones was my nurse, you know, years and years ago, weren’t you, Mrs. Jones?”
Amelia Jones nodded.
“How is your husband? Is he still unpleasant?”
“Oh, he ain’t so bad, miss,” said Mrs. Jones bravely. “He’s a little trying at times.”
“Do you know, I should like to meet him.”
“Oh no, you wouldn’t, miss,” gasped Amelia. “That’s only your kind heart. Where are you spending your holidays, miss?” she asked.
“With some friends of mine at Clifton, Molly Walker, Sir George Walker’s daughter.”
The eyes of Amelia Jones devoured the girl and Leon knew that all the love in her barren life was lavished upon this child she had nursed. They walked up and down the platform together and when her train came in Mrs. Jones stood at the carriage door until it drew out from the station and then waited motionless looking after the express until it melted in the distance.
“I’ll never see her again!” she muttered brokenly. “I’ll never see her again! Oh, my God!”
Her face was drawn and ghastly in its pallor and Leon took her arm.
“You must come and have some refreshment, Mrs. Jones. You are very fond of that young lady?”
“Fond of her?” She turned upon him. “Fond of her? She—she is my daughter!”
They had a carriage to themselves going back to Town and Mrs. Jones told her story.
“Grace was three years old when her father got into trouble,” she said. “He had always been a brute and I think he’d been under the eyes of the police since he was a bit of a kid. I didn’t know this when I married him. I was nursemaid in a house that he’d burgled and I was discharged because I’d left the kitchen door ajar for him, not knowing that he was a thief. He did one long lagging and when he came out he swore he wouldn’t go back to prison again, and the next time if there was any danger of an alarm being raised, he would make it a case of murder. He and another man got into touch with a rich bookmaker on Blackheath. Bash used to do his dirty work for him, but they quarrelled and Bash and his pal burgled the house and got away with nearly nine thousand pounds.
“It was a big race day and Bash knew there’d be a lot of money in notes that had been taken on the racecourse and that couldn’t be traced. I thought he’d killed
