“It’s very ’ard on a woman who’s got five mouths to fill,” whined Mrs. Inglethorne; “but I wouldn’t part with ’em for the world. And it’s warm in the kitchen when we’ve had a coke fire going all evening.”
Leslie went out of that sad little room sick at heart. Poverty she had seen and understood. Possibly these unfortunate children were as well off as thousands of others in the great metropolis. The weaklings would die; the fittest survive and presently drag their stunted bodies to a free school, where they would be taught just enough to enable them to write their betting slips and read the football reports intelligently.
Peter was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs.
“I think I’ll go home now. I’m rather tired,” she said. “Most likely you will be interrogated tomorrow either by Mr. Coldwell or an officer from the Yard. I think the best thing you can do is to go up and interview him.”
And then, abruptly:
“Have you seen your mother since you have been free?”
He shook his head.
“My parent has expressed her wishes on the matter in unmistakable terms. We were never en rapport, so to speak, and perhaps it is a little too late now to attempt to arrive at mutual understanding.”
She looked down at the floor, her lips pursed.
“I wonder,” she said, and held out her hand. “Good night, Peter Dawlish.”
He took her hand, held it for a second, and then:
“You’re rather wonderful. I’m getting a new angle on life,” he said.
She had one more call to make. Inspector Coldwell had promised to wait at Scotland Yard until she returned with her report, and she found him sipping coffee in the lobby, and told him briefly the result of her visit.
“I never thought Peter knew much about it. What does he know of Druze?”
He listened intently until she had finished.
“Rum! All the paths in this maze lead back to the Princess Bellini. Yes, I’ll see Peter; I’ll wire him in the morning,” he yawned. “It is time all honest people were in bed. I’m going to take you home.”
Her cab was waiting, and though she had no need of an escort, he pointed out that her way was largely his.
“What we’re going to do about Lady Raytham, I don’t know. I’m taking it for granted that you have discovered a whole lot that you haven’t told me.”
“Not a whole lot, a little,” she admitted.
Mr. Coldwell scratched his head.
“That little is usually crucial. However, I am not going to discourage you. Keep your mystery—a little romance in police work has a wonderful tonic value.”
The cab carried them across deserted Trafalgar Square, and a few seconds later stopped before the door of Leslie’s flat.
“I suppose you know all that is to be known about the case?” he said, with a touch of the sardonic, as he handed her out of the cab. “Whilst I, a poor old muddleheaded copper, am groping round like a blindfolded man in a fog.”
“I think I know a lot,” she admitted, with a tired smile.
Coldwell was amused.
“The complacency of the woman! Here she is, keeping all her clues up her sleeve, ready to spring them out and reduce police headquarters to a bewildered pulp! Know all about Druze, do you?”
“I know a lot about him.”
“Fine!” said Coldwell.
She had the door open now, and he waited until she was in the passage before he dropped his bombshell.
“Promise me you won’t come out and ask questions, but will go straight up to bed, if I tell you something?”
“I promise,” she said.
He put his hand on the knob of the door, ready to shut it.
“Arthur, or Anthony, Druze, as he was variously called, was a woman!”
The door slammed on her; before she recovered from her stupor she heard the rattle of the cab as it moved away.
IX
Druze—a woman! It was incredible—almost impossible! Yet that shrewd old man would not have jested with her. She dragged herself up the stairs, her limp body aching for rest, her mind very wide awake and alert.
Druze a woman! She shook her head helplessly. And then she remembered Lady Raytham’s hysterical laughter. “What was Druze to you?” Jane Raytham knew!
Leslie was too sane, too big, to feel foolish. She stopped on the landing and, leaning heavily on the balustrade, she recalled the hairless face and figure of the portly butler. All her theories must go by the board. A scaffolding must be erected on a new foundation.
She found Lucretia Brown huddled up in a chair before a dead fire fast asleep. Lucretia had never been trained out of her habit of “waiting up.” It was her firm conviction that only this practice of hers saved her mistress from a terrible fate. She woke with a start and came reeling to her feet.
“Oh, miss!” she gasped. “What time is it?”
Leslie glanced at the mantelpiece.
“Three o’clock,” she said, “and a fine morning! Why aren’t you in bed, you poor, knock-kneed girl?”
“I’m not knock-kneed, and never was,” protested Lucretia. “Three o’clock, miss? What a time!” She shivered. And then, morbidly curious: “Has anything been up, miss?”
“More things are ‘up’ than will ever come down, I think,” replied Leslie, as she dropped into a chair. “There’s been a murder.”
“Good Gawd!” said the shocked Lucretia. And then, with pardonable curiosity: “Who done it?”
“If I knew ‘who’d done it,’ I’d be a very contented female.”
Leslie stifled a yawn.
“Run the bath, Lucretia, make me some hot milk, and don’t wake me till ten o’clock.”
“If I’m awake then,” said Lucretia ominously. “I never see such a place as this. You turn night into day, as the Good Book says—London’s a modern Babbyling! Did he have his throat cut?” She
