Lord Peter promptly gathered up Parker and swooped down with him upon the Tabernacle Mission, before whose dim and grim frontage Mrs. Merdle’s long black bonnet and sweeping copper exhaust made an immense impression. The small fry of the neighbourhood had clustered about her and were practising horn solos almost before Wimsey had rung the bell. On Parker’s threatening them with punishment and casually informing them that he was a police-officer, they burst into ecstasies of delight, and joining hands, formed a ring-o’-roses round him, under the guidance of a sprightly young woman of twelve years old or thereabouts. Parker made a few harassed darts at them, but the ring only broke up, shrieking with laughter, and re-formed, singing. The Mission door opened at the moment, displaying this undignified exhibition to the eyes of a lank young man in spectacles, who shook a long finger disapprovingly and said, “Now, you children,” without the slightest effect and apparently without the faintest expectation of producing any.
Lord Peter explained his errand.
“Oh, come in, please,” said the young man, who had one finger in a book of theology. “I’m afraid your friend—er—this is rather a noisy district.”
Parker shook himself free from his tormentors, and advanced, breathing threatenings and slaughter, to which the enemy responded by a derisive blast of the horn.
“They’ll run those batteries down,” said Wimsey.
“You can’t do anything with the little devils,” growled Parker.
“Why don’t you treat them as human beings?” retorted Wimsey. “Children are creatures of like passions with politicians and financiers. Here, Esmeralda!” he added, beckoning to the ringleader.
The young woman put her tongue out and made a rude gesture, but observing the glint of coin in the outstretched hand, suddenly approached and stood challengingly before them.
“Look here,” said Wimsey, “here’s half a crown—thirty pennies, you know. Any use to you?”
The child promptly proved her kinship with humanity. She became abashed in the presence of wealth, and was silent, rubbing one dusty shoe upon the calf of her stocking.
“You appear,” pursued Lord Peter, “to be able to keep your young friends in order if you choose. I take you, in fact, for a woman of character. Very well, if you keep them from touching my car while I’m in the house, you get this half-crown, see? But if you let ’em blow the horn, I shall hear it. Every time the horn goes, you lose a penny, got that? If the horn blows six times, you only get two bob. If I hear it thirty times, you don’t get anything. And I shall look out from time to time, and if I see anybody mauling the car about or sitting in it, then you don’t get anything. Do I make myself clear?”
“I takes care o’ yer car fer ’arf a crahn. An’ ef the ’orn goes, you docks a copper ’orf of it.”
“That’s right.”
“Right you are, mister. I’ll see none on ’em touches it.”
“Good girl. Now, sir.”
The spectacled young man led them into a gloomy little waiting-room, suggestive of a railway station and hung with Old Testament prints.
“I’ll tell Mr. Dawson you’re here,” said he, and vanished, with the volume of theology still clutched in his hand.
Presently a shuffling step was heard on the coconut matting, and Wimsey and Parker braced themselves to confront the villainous claimant.
The door, however, opened to admit an elderly West Indian, of so humble and inoffensive an appearance that the hearts of the two detectives sank into their boots. Anything less murderous could scarcely be imagined, as he stood blinking nervously at them from behind a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, the frames of which had at one time been broken and bound with twine.
The Rev. Hallelujah Dawson was undoubtedly a man of colour. He had the pleasant, slightly aquiline features and brown-olive skin of the Polynesian. His hair was scanty and greyish—not woolly, but closely curled. His stooping shoulders were clad in a threadbare clerical coat. His black eyes, yellow about the whites and slightly protruding, rolled amiably at them, and his smile was open and frank.
“You asked to see me?” he began, in perfect English, but with the soft native intonation. “I think I have not the pleasure—?”
“How do you do, Mr. Dawson? Yes. We are—er—makin’ certain inquiries—er—in connection with the family of the Dawsons of Crofton in Warwickshire, and it has been suggested that you might be able to enlighten us, what? as to their West Indian connections—if you would be so good.”
“Ah, yes!” The old man drew himself up slightly. “I am myself—in a way—a descendant of the family. Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you. We thought you might be.”
“You do not come from Miss Whittaker?”
There was something eager, yet defensive in the tone. Wimsey, not quite knowing what was behind it, chose the discreeter part.
“Oh, no. We are—preparin’ a work on County Families, don’t you know. Tombstones and genealogies and that sort of thing.”
“Oh!—yes—I hoped perhaps—” The mild tones died away in a sigh. “But I shall be very happy to help you in any way.”
“Well, the question now is, what became of Simon Dawson? We know that he left his family and sailed for the West Indies in—ah!—in seventeen—”
“Eighteen hundred and ten,” said the old man, with surprising quickness.
