“H’m,” murmured Lord Flanborough, a little taken back, “very creditable.”
Moya turned to Michael indignantly.
“I suppose that you think you are rendering a great service to the world in trying to drag this poor girl down to the gutter, in exposing her to her employers and in obtaining her dismissal from honest employment.”
“I do,” said Michael shamelessly.
“I think it is a barbarous thing to do!” said Moya angrily.
She had not yet decided in her own mind as to what steps she would take in face of this revelation. In view of her own character, it is possible that “Miss Tenby” would have a very short shift at her hands. But for the moment the opportunity for the display of benevolence and Christian charity was not to be passed over. She saw the girl’s appealing eyes and clasped hands and, for a moment, she felt a sincere thrill of pity for a brave sister struggling to escape the octopus tentacles of law and crime; for a moment she felt a genuinely unselfish desire to help another.
If she expected Inspector the Hon. Michael Pretherston—for such was his incongruous title—to wilt under her reproaches, she was disappointed. Michael had not taken his eyes from the secretary, nor had the twinkle in those eyes abated. He nodded to “Miss Tenby.”
“Kate,” he said, “you are really a wonder, and to think that you have never yet come into the clutches of the law until now.”
“Until now,” said the girl quickly, raising her voice.
He nodded.
“The Prevention of Crimes Act,” murmured Michael. “I can take you,”—he emphasized the “can”—“on a charge of obtaining employment with forged letters of recommendation, also with being a Suspected Person.”
The girl dropped her attitude of humility, threw back her head and laughed, showing her even white teeth.
“Oh, you Mike!” she railed him. “Oh, you busy fellow!”
Her amusement did not last long for instantly her face was set again and the grey eyes blazed with rage.
“One of these days you will be too clever,” she said bitterly. “I have seen better men than you and cleverer men than you go out, Michael Pretherston. You and your Prevention of Crimes Act! You can’t put that bluff over me. The Act does not come into operation until you have a conviction against my name, and that you will never get, you brute!”
“Kate, Kate!” murmured Michael. “There’s a lady present.”
She nodded.
“I guess I’ll get my kit together,” she said; “it hasn’t been exactly a holiday trip.”
“My sympathies are entirely with you,” said Michael; “it must have been awfully dull after the gay orgies of Crime Street.”
“There is one thing I have always wanted to know,” said the girl, pinching her lip thoughtfully.
She walked to the desk, and Lord Flanborough was too much taken back to arrest her progress. Without a word she opened the silver box on the table and took out a cigarette.
“I have always wanted to know what kind of dope this dear old gentleman smoked.”
She looked at the cigarette critically and with an exclamation of disgust threw it back on the desk.
“Gold Flavours!” she said scornfully; “can you beat it, Mike? And he has a hundred thousand a year!”
“You must make allowances for the decadence of the governing classes,” said the soothing Michael.
He turned and nodded farewell to the girl and with Miss Tenby’s arm in his he passed out of the room, and Lord Flanborough and his daughter looked at one another in speechless amazement.
II
Mike Said Nothing—There Was Nothing to Say
“You might do worse than lunch with me,” said Michael Pretherston.
He stood outside Felton House with the girl whose belongings in one small Gladstone bag had been deposited on the curb, pending the arrival of a taxicab.
“Why should I lunch with you?” she asked insolently. “I thought you were going to pinch me.”
“Your vulgarity is appalling!” said Michael, shaking his head in reproof. “I cannot pinch you in the vulgar sense. I have no desire to perform that operation in the corporeal sense. You had better compromise and lunch with me.”
The girl hesitated.
“Think of my reputation,” she said.
“Thoughts of your reputation keep me awake at night,” answered Michael lightly and called a taxi.
They found a little restaurant in Soho and in an underground cellar where the bad ventilation was compensated for by a blaze of light, they ate their simple meal.
“Now, Kate, I want to ask you what your little game is,” said Michael; “and I need the information because I know it isn’t a little game.”
“I was scared sick over those pearls,” said the girl, ignoring the question. “It would have been horrible bad luck to have been taken for a job I had nothing to do with and such a paltry job, too!”
“You owe me something,” said Michael.
“I owe you more than I can ever repay you,” said the girl significantly.
“I suppose one of these days,” suggested the detective after an interval of thought, “you will instruct some of your hired pals, Gregori or the Colonel or little Stockmar, to inflict on me a painful injury.”
“You!” said the girl scornfully. “If there were not men like you in the police we should have been destroyed years ago! You are a sort of an insurance scheme and it pays us to keep you alive and well. Why, Crime Street would go into mourning the day you were buried.”
“You are not trying to be rude to me, are you?” he asked.
She looked at him slyly from under her long lashes and her eyes were dancing with fun.
“Why do you think I went to Lord Flanborough?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I’m blessed if I know,” he confessed. “Of course, I knew it was you the moment I heard of the rapid
