“Thieves in a hurry are very careless,” she said, with the light of battle in her eyes; “and it really doesn’t matter whether Mrs. Inglethorne is hanged for a sheep or a lamb, so long as she’s well and truly hanged!”
She sent Peter to the police station, and went down to interview the children. A grubby lot of little people they were, very pale, very starved looking, except one, who apparently was in charge in Mrs. Inglethorne’s absence. She was the little girl, Leslie learnt later, who had slept in the woman’s bed, and, unlike the others, she bore a striking facial resemblance to her mother.
“You didn’t find nothing, did you?” She was frankly hostile. “You’ve got to be up very early to catch my old woman, missis!”
And then, turning to the silent semicircle of children who constituted the remainder of Mrs. Inglethorne’s family, she ordered them peremptorily away.
“Go and play in the back yard.”
Poor little starvelings! Leslie’s heart bled to see them. She sought, by delicate inquiry, to discover where Elizabeth had been taken, but the preternatural cunning of the child she questioned baffled her.
Peter came back in a very short time, accompanied by a uniformed inspector and a plain clothes officer. They made an inspection of the silk and carried it off with them to the station.
“This may affect you a little, Peter Dawlish,” said Leslie when they were alone. “The children will be removed to the workhouse this afternoon, and Mrs. Inglethorne will be arrested immediately on her return, so that you will have the house to yourself.”
He laughed.
“I’m not depressed,” he said.
He walked with her as far as Westminster Bridge, and at parting she asked him a curious question.
“What would you do if you had half a million pounds?”
He looked at her in astonishment and laughed.
“That isn’t my favourite dream,” he said. “But I think the first thing I should do would be to send to America to discover whether I have been, as you would say, ‘well and truly’ divorced.”
“Indeed?” Her tone was a trifle cold. “Is that necessary—when Jane Raytham is within a penny bus ride?”
And with a nod she was gone.
Peter returned to the house and found it very difficult to resume his work or concentrate his mind upon lists. He had hardly started before the police officials came with an omnibus to take away the children, and they departed with no visible reluctance, except in the case of the girl whom Leslie had interviewed.
At four o’clock in the afternoon Mrs. Inglethorne came into the house in triumph, and without going into the kitchen, mounted the stairs and stood, arms akimbo, her red face made hideous by a self-satisfied smirk, confronting her lodger.
“Well, did you bring in the police?” she demanded. “And what are you going to do with Elizabeth?” And, when he did not answer, she shook her fist at him. “Out you go, out of my house, you ‘nose’!1 I’ll learn you to go prying around and threatening me! You leave this room at once, or I’ll send for a policeman.”
“I think I’ll stay,” he said good humouredly.
“Oh, will you?”
She went to the door and roared for Emma. There was no answer.
“I can save you a lot of trouble, Mrs. Inglethorne,” said Peter, putting down his pen. “Your children have been taken away to the workhouse.”
She staggered back against the wall, her big mouth open wide.
“W-why?” she stammered.
“It is usual to take children to the workhouse when their parents are arrested and there are no other relatives to look after them,” he said.
“Arrested?” she screamed.
He nodded to the window, and she staggered past him and, pulling up the sash, looked out. Two men were standing on the opposite sidewalk, and one nodded as to an old friend. She recognized the detective-sergeant who had arrested her husband.
“They can’t touch me!” she screamed. “They can’t touch me! It’s my word against yours.”
“Unfortunately you left a few bolts of silk behind in the cupboard,” answered Peter.
Mrs. Inglethorne was in a state of collapse when the detectives came in to arrest her.
The motor-lorry had been traced; the driver and a man who accompanied the car had been driven to the nearest police station, where the plunder was checked and exhibited in preparation for the charge which would follow. They either could not or would not, however, give any information concerning the child, and when Leslie went to Lambeth to interview Mrs. Inglethorne in her cell, she was no more successful.
“Find her!” rapped the woman. “She’s in good hands, that’s what she is. I’m not saying anything. If you want her, find her—that’s my last word to you!”
Leslie did not notify Peter that she was coming to Lambeth. Passing up Severall Street on her way home, she saw the light in the upstairs window and guessed that he was still working hard. A postman rapped at the door, and she waited a while until it was opened, as she guessed, by Peter, and almost turned back just to say a word to him. And if she overcame this deplorable weakness, it was not lightly done.
“Leslie Maughan,” she said to herself, mounting the steps of Hungerford Bridge, “do you know what you are doing? Shall I tell you in the vulgarest terms? You’re chasing a married man! Leslie, that isn’t done—not in the best society.”
She was uncommonly weary when she dragged herself into her own sitting-room, deciding to forego the duty she had planned. This was a second call upon Greta Gurden. That afternoon there had been a consultation at Scotland Yard, but matters had not developed sufficiently to justify the issue even of a search warrant.
After a light dinner she took out the letter she had received two nights before, spread the foolscap on her desk and examined it carefully. It was a queer story she read, even in the stilted terminology of an elderly country parson, who employed such words as “primogeniture” and felt it necessary
