“Nothing, sir,” said the gaoler regretfully.
“You will pay a fine of twenty shillings or go to prison for twenty-one days.”
“I would much rather go to prison than pay,” said Leon truthfully.
So they committed him to the local gaol as he had expected. Twenty-one days later, looking very brown and fit, he burst into the flat and Manfred turned with outstretched hands.
“I heard you were back,” said Leon joyously. “I’ve had a great time! They rather upset my calculations by giving me three weeks instead of a month, and I was afraid that I’d get back before you.”
“I came back yesterday,” said George and his eyes strayed to the sideboard.
Six large Spanish onions stood in a row and Leon Gonsalez doubled up with mirth. It was not until he had changed into more presentable garments that he told of his experience.
“Bash Jones had undoubtedly homicidal plans,” he said. “The most extraordinary case of facial anamorphosis I have seen. I worked with him in the tailor’s shop. He is coming out next Monday.”
“He welcomed you, I presume, when he discovered you were from Deptford?” said Manfred dryly.
Leon nodded.
“He intends to kill his wife on the third of the month, which is the day after he is released,” he said.
“Why so precise?” asked Manfred in surprise.
“Because that is the only night she sleeps in the house alone. There are usually two young men lodgers who are railwaymen and these do duty until three in the morning on the third of every month.”
“Is this the truth or are you making it up?” asked Manfred.
“I did make it up,” admitted Gonsalez. “But this is the story I told and he swallowed it eagerly. The young men have no key, so they come in by the kitchen door which is left unlocked. The kitchen door is reached by a narrow passage which runs the length of Little Mill Street and parallel with the houses. Oh yes, he was frightfully anxious to secure information, and he told me that he would never come back to gaol again except for a short visit. An interesting fellow. I think he had better die,” said Leon, with some gravity. “Think of the possibilities for misery, George. This unfortunate girl, happy in her friends, well-bred—”
“Would you say that,” smiled Manfred, “with Bash for a father?”
“Well-bred, I repeat,” said Gonsalez firmly. “Breeding is merely a quality acquired through lifelong association with gentlefolk. Put the son of a duke in the slums and he’ll grow up a peculiar kind of slum child, but a slum child nevertheless. Think of the horror of it. Dragging this child back to the kennels of Deptford, for that will be the meaning of it, supposing this Mr. Bash Jones does not kill his wife. If he kills her then the grisly truth is out. No, I think we had better settle this Mr. Bash Jones.”
“I agree,” said Manfred, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar, and Leon Gonsalez sat down at the table with Browning’s poems open before him and read, pausing now and again to look thoughtfully into space as he elaborated the method by which Bash Jones should die.
On the afternoon of the third, Mrs. Amelia Jones was called away by telegram. She met Leon Gonsalez at Paddington Station.
“You have brought your key with you, Mrs. Jones?”
“Yes, sir,” said the woman in surprise, then, “Do you know that my husband is out of prison?”
“I know, I know,” said Gonsalez, “and because he is free I want you to go away for a couple of nights. I have some friends in Plymouth. They will probably meet you at the station and if they do not meet you, you must go to this address.”
He gave her an address of a boardinghouse that he had secured from a Plymouth newspaper.
“Here is some money. I insist upon your taking it. My friends are very anxious to help you.”
She was in tears when he left her.
“You are sure you have locked up your house?” said Leon at parting.
“I’ve got the key here, sir.”
She opened her bag and he noticed that now her hands trembled all the time.
“Let me see,” said Leon taking the bag in his hand and peering at the interior in his shortsighted way. “Yes, there it is.”
He put in his hand, brought it out apparently empty and closed the bag again.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Jones,” he said, “and don’t lose courage.”
When dark fell Leon Gonsalez arrived in Little Mill Street carrying a bulky something in a black cloth bag. He entered the house unobserved, for the night was wet and gusty and Little Mill Street crouched over its scanty fires.
He closed the door behind him and with the aid of his pocket lamp found his way to the one poor bedroom in the tiny house. He turned down the cover, humming to himself, then very carefully he removed the contents of the bag, the most important of which was a large glass globe.
Over this he carefully arranged a black wig and searched the room for articles of clothing which might be rolled into a bundle. When he had finished his work, he stepped back and regarded it with admiration. Then he went downstairs, unlocked the kitchen door, and to make absolutely certain crossed the little yard and examined the fastening of the gate which led from the lane. The lock apparently was permanently out of order and he went back satisfied.
In one corner of the room was a clothes hanger, screened from view by a length of cheap cretonne. He had cleared this corner of its clothing to make up the bundle on the bed. Then he sat down in a chair and waited with the patience which is the peculiar attribute of the scientist.
The church bells had struck two when he heard the back gate creak, and rising noiselessly took something from his pocket and stepped behind the cretonne curtain. It was not
