Mrs. Waddington stopped. She drew a step nearer. She grasped the handle and, pulling the window wide open, peered into the dark room. It seemed to be empty, but Mrs. Waddington was a cautious woman.
“My man!” she called.
Silence.
“I wish to speak to you.”
More silence. Mrs. Waddington applied the supreme test.
“I want to return that ten-dollar bill to you.”
Still silence. Mrs. Waddington was convinced. She crossed the threshold and started to feel round the walls for the switch. And, as she did so, something came to her through the throbbing darkness.
It was the smell of soup.
Mrs. Waddington stiffened like a pointing dog. Although when sitting in the vestibule of the Ritz-Carlton with Lord Hunstanton she had apparently been impervious to the fragrant scents which had so deeply affected his lordship, she was human. It was long past the hour at which she usually dined, and in the matter of sustenance she was a woman of regular habits. Already, while standing on the roof, she had been aware of certain pangs, and now she realised beyond all possibility of doubt that she was hungry. She quivered from head to foot. The smell of that soup seemed to call to the deeps of her being like the voice of an old, old love.
Moving forward like one in a trance, she groped along the wall, and found herself in an open doorway that appeared to lead into a passage. Here, away from the window, the darkness was blacker than ever: but, if she could not see, she could smell, and she needed no other guide than her nose. She walked along the passage, sniffing, and, coming to another open door, found the scent so powerful that she almost reeled. It had become a composite odour now, with a strong Welsh rarebit motif playing through it. Mrs. Waddington felt for the switch, pressed it down, and saw that she was in a kitchen. And there, simmering on the range, was a saucepan.
There are moments when even the most single-minded of women will allow herself to be distracted from the main object of her thoughts. Mrs. Waddington had reached the stage where soup seemed to her the most important—if not the only—thing in life. She removed the lid from the saucepan, and a meaty steaminess touched her like a kiss.
She drew a deep breath. She poured some of the soup into a plate. She found a spoon. She found bread. She found salt. She found pepper.
And it was while she was lovingly sprinkling the pepper that a voice spoke behind her.
“You’re pinched!” said the voice.
IV
There were not many things which could have diverted Mrs. Waddington’s attention at that moment from the plate before her. An earthquake might have done it. So might the explosion of a bomb. This voice accomplished it instantaneously. She spun round with a sharp scream, her heart feeling as if it were performing one of those eccentric South Seas dances whose popularity she had always deplored.
A policeman was standing in the doorway.
“Arrested, I should have said,” added the policeman with a touch of apology. He seemed distressed that in the first excitement of this encounter he had failed to achieve the Word Beautiful.
Mrs. Waddington was not a woman often at a loss for speech, but she could find none now. She stood panting.
“I must ask you, if you will be so good,” said the policeman courteously, “to come along with me. And it will avoid a great deal of unpleasantness if you come quietly.”
The torpor consequent upon the disintegrating shock of this meeting began to leave Mrs. Waddington.
“I can explain!” she cried.
“You will have every opportunity of doing so at the station-house,” said the policeman. “In your own interests I should advise you until then to say as little as possible. For I must warn you that in pursuance of my duty I shall take a memorandum of any statement which you may make. See, I have my notebook and pencil here in readiness.”
“I was doing no harm.”
“That, is for the judge to decide. I need scarcely point out that your presence in this apartment is, to say the least, equivocal. You came in through a window—an action which constitutes breaking and entering, and, furthermore, I find you in the act of purloining the property of the owner of the apartment—to wit, soup. I am afraid I must ask you to accompany me.”
Mrs. Waddington started to clasp her hands in a desperate appeal: and, doing so, was aware that some obstacle prevented this gesture.
It was suddenly borne in upon her that she was still holding the pepper-pot. And suddenly a thought came like a full-blown rose, flushing her brow.
“Ha!” she exclaimed.
“I beg your pardon?” said the policeman.
Everything in this world, every little experience which we undergo or even merely read about, is intended, philosophers tell us, to teach us something, to help to equip us for the battle of life. It was not, according to this theory, mere accident, therefore, which a few days before had caused Mrs. Waddington to read and subconsciously memorise the report that had appeared in the evening paper to which she subscribed of a burglary at the residence of a certain leading citizen of West Orange, New Jersey. The story had been sent to help her.
Of the less important details of this affair she retained no recollection: but the one salient point in connection with it came back to her now with all the force of an inspiration from above. Cornered by an indignant householder, she recalled, the West Orange burglar had made his escape by the simple means of throwing about two ounces of pepper in the householder’s face.
What this humble, probably uneducated man had been able to achieve was surely not beyond the powers of a woman like herself—the honorary president of twenty-three charitable societies and a well-known lecturer
