Before the twenty-sixth house in the road Mr. Reeder paused and gazed with mild interest at the blue blinds which covered every window. Evidently Miss Magda Grayne was a lover of flowers, for geraniums filled the window-boxes and were set at intervals along the tiny border under the bow window. In the centre of the grass plot was a circular flowerbed with one flowerless rose tree, the leaves of which were drooping and brown.
As he raised his eyes to the upper window, the blind went up slowly, and he was dimly conscious that there was a figure behind the white lace curtains. Mr. Reeder walked hurriedly away, as one caught in an immodest act, and resumed his peregrinations until he came to the big nursery gardener’s which formed the corner lot at the far end of the road.
Here he stood for some time in contemplation, his arm resting on the iron railings, his eyes staring blankly at the vista of greenhouses. He remained in this attitude so long that one of the nurserymen, not unnaturally thinking that a stranger was seeking a way into the gardens, came over with the laborious gait of the man who wrings his living from the soil, and asked if he was wanting anybody.
“Several people,” sighed Mr. Reeder; “several people!”
Leaving the resentful man to puzzle out his impertinence, he slowly retraced his steps. At No. 412 he stopped again, opened the little iron gate and passed up the path to the front door. A small girl answered his knock and ushered him into the parlour.
The room was not well furnished; it was scarcely furnished at all. A strip of almost new linoleum covered the passage; the furniture of the parlour itself was made up of wicker chairs, a square of art carpet and a table. He heard the sound of feet above his head, feet on bare boards, and then presently the door opened and a girl came in.
She was pretty in a heavy way, but on her face he saw the marks of sorrow. It was pale and haggard; the eyes looked as though she had been recently weeping.
“Miss Magda Grayne?” he asked, rising as she came in.
She nodded.
“Are you from the police?” she asked quickly.
“Not exactly the police,” he corrected carefully. “I hold an—er—an appointment in the office of the Public Prosecutor, which is analogous, to, but distinct from, a position in the Metropolitan Police Force.”
She frowned, and then:
“I wondered if anybody would come to see me,” she said. “Mr. Green sent you?”
“Mr. Green told me of your existence: he did not send me.”
There came to her face in that second a look which almost startled him. Only for a fleeting space of time, the expression had dawned and passed almost before the untrained eye could detect its passage.
“I was expecting somebody to come,” she said. Then: “What made him do it?” she asked.
“You think he is guilty?”
“The police think so.” She drew a long sigh. “I wish to God I had never seen this place!”
He did not answer; his eyes were roving round the apartment. On a bamboo table was an old vase which had been clumsily filled with golden chrysanthemums, of a peculiarly beautiful variety. Not all, for amidst them flowered a large Michaelmas daisy that had the forlorn appearance of a parvenu that had strayed by mistake into noble company.
“You’re fond of flowers?” he murmured.
She looked at the vase indifferently.
“Yes, I like flowers,” she said. “The girl put them in there.” Then: “Do you think they will hang him?”
The brutality of the question, put without hesitation, pained Reeder.
“It is a very serious charge,” he said. And then: “Have you a photograph of Mr. Green?”
She frowned.
“Yes; do you want it?”
He nodded.
She had hardly left the room before he was at the bamboo table and had lifted out the flowers. As he had seen through the glass, they were roughly tied with a piece of string. He examined the ends, and here again his first observation had been correct: none of these flowers had been cut; they had been plucked bodily from their stalks. Beneath the string was the paper which had been first wrapped about the stalks. It was a page torn from a notebook; he could see the red lines, but the pencilled writing was indecipherable.
As her foot sounded on the stairs, he replaced the flowers in the vase, and when she came in he was looking through the window into the street.
“Thank you,” he said, as he took the photograph from her.
It bore an affectionate inscription on the back.
“You’re married, he tells me, madam?”
“Yes, I am married, and practically divorced,” she said shortly.
“Have you been living here long?”
“About three months,” she answered. “It was his wish that I should live here.”
He looked at the photograph again.
“Do you know Constable Burnett?”
He saw a dull flush come to her face and die away again.
“Yes, I know the sloppy fool!” she said viciously. And then, realising that she had been surprised into an expression which was not altogether ladylike, she went on, in a softer tone: “Mr. Burnett is rather sentimental, and I don’t like sentimental people, especially—well, you understand, Mr.—”
“Reeder,” murmured that gentleman.
“You understand, Mr. Reeder, that when a girl is engaged and in my position, those kind of attentions are not very welcome.”
Reeder was looking at her keenly. Of her sorrow and distress there could be no doubt. On the subject of the human emotions, and the ravages they make upon the human countenance, Mr. Reeder was almost as great an authority as Mantegazza.
“On your birthday,” he said. “How very sad! You were born on the seventeenth of October. You are English, of course?”
“Yes,
