In a few years he had made himself indispensable to his employer; that is to say, they thought they could not get on without him, though in fact his application to his duties was uncertain and desultory. Four out of five inquiries meant nothing to him; he made nothing of them; and Whitechapel thanked the God of its fathers for his incompetence. The fifth case would appeal to his capricious imagination; he would be prodigal of time and of pains; and he would bring off some coup which was hymned for weeks behind closed doors in the Indescribable Building. There was that young fellow at Croydon, for example, who had his motor-bicycle insured, but not his mother-in-law. Her body was found at the foot of an embankment beside a lonely road in Kent, and there was no doubt that it had been shot out of the sidecar; only (as Bredon managed to prove) the lady’s death had occurred on the previous day from natural causes. There was the well-known bootlegger—well known, at least, to the United States police—who insured all his cargoes with the Indescribable and then laid secret information against himself whereby vigilant officials sank hundreds of dummy cases in the sea, all the bottles containing seawater. And there was the lady of fashion who burgled her own jewels in the most plausible manner you could imagine and had them sold in Paris. These crooked ways too the fitful intuitions of Miles Bredon made plain in the proper quarters.
He was well thought of, in fact, by everyone except himself. For himself, he bitterly regretted the necessity that had made him become a spy—he would use no other word for it—and constantly alarmed his friends by announcing his intention of going into the publishing trade, or doing something relatively honest. The influence which saved him on these occasions was that of—how shall I say it?—his wife. I know—I know it is quite wrong to have your detective married until the last chapter, but it is not my fault. It is the fault of two mocking eyes and two very capable hands that were employed in driving brass-hats to and fro in London at the end of the war. Bredon surrendered to these, and made a hasty but singularly fortunate marriage. Angela Bredon was under no illusions about the splendid figure in khaki that stood beside her at the altar. Wiser than her generation, she realized that marriages were not “for the duration”; that she would have to spend the rest of her life with a large, untidy, absentminded man who would frequently forget that she was in the room. She saw that he needed above all things a nurse and a chauffeur, and she knew that she could supply both these deficiencies admirably. She took him as a husband, with all a husband’s failings, and the Indescribable itself could not have guaranteed her more surely against the future.
There is a story of some Bishop, or important person, who got his way at Rome rather unexpectedly over an appeal, and, when asked by his friends how he did it, replied, “Fallendo infallibilem.” It might have been the motto of Angela’s mastery over her husband; the detective, always awake to the possibilities of fraudulent dealing in every other human creature, did not realize that his wife was a tiny bit cleverer than he was and was always conspiring for his happiness behind his back. For instance, it was his custom of an evening to play a very long and complicated game of patience, which he had invented for himself; you had to use four packs, and the possible permutations of it were almost unlimited. It was an understood thing in the household that Angela, although she had grasped the rules of the game, did not really know how to play it. But when, as often happened, the unfinished game had to be left undisturbed all night, she was quite capable of stealing down early in the morning and altering the positions of one or two cards, so that he should get the game “out” in time to cope with his ordinary work. These pious deceits of hers were never, I am glad to say, unmasked.
About a fortnight after Mr. Mottram’s interview with the young man at Indescribable House these two fortunate people were alone together after dinner, she alternately darning socks and scratching the back of a sentimental-looking fox-terrier, he playing his interminable patience. The bulk of the pack lay on a wide table in front of him, but there were outlying sections of the design dotted here and there on the floor within reach of his hand. The telephone bell rang, and he looked up at her appealingly—obviously, he was tied hand and foot by his occupation—which to her only meant putting her darning away, lifting the fox-terrier off her feet, and going out into the hall. She understood the signal, and obeyed it. There was a fixed law of the household that if she answered a call which was meant for him he must try to guess what it was about before she told him. This
