The gates had only just been opened and beyond the park-keepers and a slouching tramp he met nobody. He sat on one of the garden seats by the side of the lake, pulled his overcoat about his legs for the morning was chilly and began to scan the headlines in the newspaper. There was nothing startling here, but he read the columns conscientiously.
There was nothing in life which did not interest Michael Pretherston. He might have taken for his motto homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. It was a saying of T. B. Smith’s that Michael could even write a readable volume on the psychology of dogfights. Every little larceny, however sordid, every tiny embezzlement however paltry, every swindle whether it was carried out by the great confidence men who “worked London” or by the smaller fry in the half-crown line of business gave him food for reflection and some little scrap of information which he stored away for future use.
He was in the midst of a long account of an East End arson charge when he heard his name called softly and looked up. He jumped to his feet.
“Why, Kate,” he said, “haven’t you got any home?”
The girl was standing a few feet from him with an odd look on her face.
“I think it must be fate that brought me out this morning,” she said; “sit down, Mike, and tell me all the news.”
She showed no sign of resentment of his uncavalier treatment.
“Did you follow me here, or did I follow you?”
“I tell you it was fate,” she said. “I could not sleep and I drove my Mercedes down.”
“And how is the Princess Bacheffski?” he asked as she seated herself by his side.
“The Princess—?”
“Bacheffski—poor old Ralph! What a thing to put over him!”
She leant forward, her chin on her palm, her elbow on her crossed knee.
“You frighten me sometimes,” she said. “I have not been able to make up my mind whether you are clever or whether you are lucky.”
“I am both lucky and clever,” he said. “Tell me something about your property in the Ural Mountains,” he said.
“In Poland,” she corrected him.
“Mines, I suppose?”
“There are no mines on my property,” she said calmly; “would you be greatly surprised if I told you I had an estate in Poland?”
“Nothing you said would surprise me, unless you told me you were going to be a good girl and respect the law relating to property.”
He folded his paper and dropped it into a wire receptacle provided for that purpose and she followed the operations with amusement.
“What a tidy soul you are,” she said; “fancy doing things you are told and obeying even bylaws.”
“We all obey bylaws. You are not so original as you think. For instance, I observe that you are wearing a little toque—is that the word?”
“That is the word,” she agreed.
“Toques are fashionable at this present moment. You are obeying the bylaws. You haven’t the courage to come out in a sky-blue tam-o’shanter with an ostrich feather because it is against the bylaws. Also I remark that your dress is very short and very full. You are not wearing a Roman toga or a Grecian gown, or even a hobble skirt. Why? Because it is against the bylaws. It is absurd to disobey one set and slavishly obey another.”
“You are quaint!” was the only answer she gave.
“Will you tell me, Princess?”
“Don’t call me ‘Princess’ if you please,” she said quietly.
“Well, will you tell me, my landowner, what was the game with Ralph? He described you with the greatest enthusiasm by-the-way. The night you met him you were all dolled up to kill. Did you bring down your birds?”
“I got him,” she admitted.
She was not as bright as usual.
“You are overdoing it,” said Michael; “you are trying to do too much. Your doctor would probably tell you that you ought not to commit more than one burglary a month.”
She laughed softly.
“You are very quaint,” she said again.
“You don’t feel like making a full and frank confession, I suppose,” he suggested; “you would not like to burst into tears and sob out your young heart on my shoulder?”
“That sob stuff never did agree with me.”
He raised a disapproving hand.
“Kate,” he said, “I have noticed a disposition in you to adopt the slang which is employed exclusively by American newspaper reporters, vaudeville artistes and other members of the criminal classes.”
“I will tell you this,” she said sitting upright and looking him fully in the face, “we are going to do a big thing. The most colossal, the most daring that has ever been done and we are going to do it today. You want to know why I went to Flanborough’s, why I made up to that unspeakable person, Ralph Sapson? Those are my two victims. I will tell you more than this,” she said after a moment’s thought, “in order to ensure the success of my scheme I have arranged for those two gentlemen to be out of London on this bright Sabbath day. I can’t tell you any more, Mike.”
“You are like a serial story, you finish off at the most interesting place,” he grumbled.
His keen grey eyes searched hers and she met them fairly.
“I wish you weren’t,” he said.
“Weren’t what?” she asked.
“In this business,” he nodded. “I wish you weren’t.”
“Perhaps I will be good one of these days,” she said, “and then you can recommend me for a job at two-ten-per. I’d make an ideal secretary for you, Mike. I know all the underworld by name. You could cut out your finger print department and leave it to Kate. What would happen, do you think,” she went on, “if I went to a Salvation Army officer and said, ‘I have been very wicked but now I am going to be
