“Has she divorced you?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know. Things like that are possible in America, but I’ve had no notification.”
Leslie bit her lip.
“If she hasn’t—she’s committed bigamy. You realize that?”
“I realize that,” he said shortly. “Which means that I cannot free myself without betraying her—I can’t do that. I couldn’t expose her to imprisonment.”
There was a tense and painful silence.
“Is that all?” she asked. “All you have to tell me?”
“You did not need telling, I think,” he said, a little bitterly.
“No.” She lit another cigarette; the flame of the match quivered unsteadily. “You’re very unfortunate, Peter Dawlish.”
She blew out the match with deliberation and put it carefully in her saucer by the side of the sodden cigarette.
“You knew nothing about Druze, of course, or you would have told me. When did you say your father disinherited you?”
“The day before I went to prison.”
She considered this.
“Tell me, Peter—you don’t mind my calling you Peter? I feel rather sisterly towards you just now—what was the relationship between your father and mother? Cordial?”
He shook his head.
“No; they were never cordial, they were polite.”
She bit her lip, looking at him absently.
“Did you ever see the Princess Bellini at your father’s house?”
“Only once,” he replied. “Father disliked her—”
“She was a sort of aunt, wasn’t she?” Leslie interrupted.
“I’ve never exactly fathomed the relationship. I’ve always understood that the Princess Bellini’s brother married my mother’s sister.”
She rose from the table abruptly, for no apparent reason.
“Peter Dawlish,” she said, and her voice shook a little in spite of her assumption of banter, “if you were cursed with my intense curiosity you might be a very much happier man.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you—some day. And now let us get back to our muttons; and our muttons for the moment are poor Elizabeth. The only difficulty in the way is Mrs. Inglethorne. As a loving mother, she may very well object to her child being taken from her. Obviously, I cannot use the same argument as you have done. If she is a ‘fence’ and a lawbreaker, it is my duty to inform Mr. Coldwell and have her arrested. If she isn’t a lawbreaker, we shall have to get after her from another angle. That sounds terribly businesslike. I think I’ll go back with you to Severall Street and see Mrs. Inglethorne myself. She may be amenable to reason.”
They went by bus to the southern end of Westminster Bridge and walked along York Road together. Just before they reached Severall Street they saw a small motor-lorry turn into the main road, and mechanically, Leslie, who had a weakness for such mental registrations, turned her head to note the number. It was a favourite trick of hers to carry fifty or sixty motorcar numbers in her head and jot them down at the close of the day—a practice into which Mr. Coldwell had initiated her. As she looked round—
“Lady!”
A shrill voice called her.
“Who was that?” she asked, but Peter had not heard.
They reached the house, and he opened the door and called Mrs. Inglethorne, but it was one of the children who answered.
“Mother’s gone out. Her and Elizabeth.”
Sometimes the woman took the child with her when she went shopping, Peter explained.
“I’m afraid I’ve brought you on a long job,” he said. “She may be out for hours.”
Leaving her for a moment in the passage, he ran upstairs to his room, intending to show her one of his small treasures, the photograph of his dead father. He reached the head of the stairs, and then stopped, aghast. The door of the mysterious locked room which adjoined his own was wide open, and when he strode in he saw it was empty. Mrs. Inglethorne was a quick worker, and, in the space of time between his departure and his return, had removed all evidence of her guilt.
He went into his own room, pulled open the drawer of the table where he kept his few treasures, and had taken out the small leather-covered portfolio when he saw some writing on the pad; a few scribbled words in a childish hand.
“She has taken me away.—Elizabeth.”
He tore off the corner of the blotting-paper and went back to the girl.
“I was afraid of this,” she said in a low voice. “Do you remember the cry ‘Lady!’ as we passed the motor-van? Where is the nearest telephone booth?”
At the corner of the street was a little general shop, which had a telephone sign, and Leslie almost ran into the shop. There was some delay before the instrument was disengaged, but in a few minutes she was connected with Scotland Yard and was talking to Coldwell.
“The number of the car is XY 63369,” she said. “There is no doubt whatever that it contains stolen property, but it is the little girl I want.”
“I’ll send out a call,” was Coldwell’s reply. “We may not pick it up before tonight; on the other hand, we may be lucky.”
“Where are you going now?” asked Peter when they were outside the shop.
“Back to the house,” said Leslie. “I want to look at that room.”
“They cleared everything.”
She nodded.
“Thieves in a hurry are very careless people, and perhaps Mrs. Inglethorne isn’t so clever as she imagines.”
The room was apparently bare; the only article of furniture it contained was a long table, and by the dust-marks on this Leslie was able to judge the extent of the property that had been stored. On either side of the rusty fireplace was a cupboard. Both of these she opened and found empty, except for a little heap of rubbish at the bottom. The second, however, was locked. With a table-knife borrowed from the kitchen she forced back the catch and pulled open the door. There was nothing very much there, but enough. Three bolts of silk, one still bearing the label of the
