The strain began to affect his nerves and it must be admitted that not infrequently “Soapy Joe” was anything but saponaceous in manner. Mrs. French soon noticed it and it annoyed her.
“What on earth’s bitten you, Joe?” she asked one evening when absentmindedness and short answers were all that she could extract by a thrilling tale of the next door neighbour’s servant’s delinquencies.
“Nothing,” said French.
“Nothing,” she repeated scornfully. “Don’t tell me a pack of lies. You’ve had something on your mind for the last fortnight. What’s the matter?”
“Well,” French admitted, “I suppose it’s this confounded case. I don’t seem to get any forrader with it. I should have had those three people long before this and I can’t get a line on them anywhere.”
“I thought it was that. Now, I’ll tell you what you’ll do. You’ll put the thing out of your head and take me to the Palladium. Then when we come home I’ll make some tea and you’ll tell me the whole story. Telling it like that will perhaps clear it up in your mind and you’ll see how to get on.”
French did not often bring his business into his home or discuss his cases with his wife. But on certain occasions when he had felt utterly up against it he had put his difficulties before her in detail, and it had not seldom happened that she had made some remark or thrown out some suggestion which when followed up had led him to his goal. He remembered particularly one case when she had practically told him the solution of a problem which he himself had been utterly unable to imagine—that worrying conundrum of the identity of the mysterious Mrs. X in the Gething murder case of Hatton Garden. Suddenly a wave of hope flowed over him. Perhaps in this case also she would, as he put it, “take a notion.”
With a sudden recrudescence of his old energy he jumped to his feet, crossed the room and implanted a wholehearted and resounding kiss on the good lady’s cheek.
“Bless you, Em,” he cried. “You’re not such a bad old sort. We just will. Come along.”
They went along; he, throwing off his depression and in better heart than he had been for many days, enjoying the programme, laughing unaffectedly over the jokes; she, saying little and caring nothing for the show, but full of a tender maternal feeling for this great child in whom all her life was centred.
When they reached home she made the promised tea, but French with amazing sleight of hand managed to transform his portion into a glass of whisky and hot water during its passage from the kitchen. He was not a drinker, but occasionally of an evening or if he met a friend he would take what he called “half a peg.” This evening somehow seemed to require some such form of celebration.
For, illogical though it might be, he had suddenly become wholly optimistic. Far more than he realized he was building on the chance of his wife’s “taking one of her notions.”
Presently they began to discuss the affair, she seated and bending over a piece of sewing, he on his feet and moving restlessly about.
“I don’t see, Emily, that I can tell you very much more about it,” he declared. “I explained it to you before. There have been no fresh developments since then.”
“Huh,” she returned as she drew back her head and looked critically at her work. “Then tell me again.”
Pacing slowly up and down the room, French retold the whole story: the call from Arrowsmith, the interview with Thurza Darke, the checking up of the girl’s story, the appointment in the National Gallery which she failed to keep, the search for her and its tragic end at Portsmouth, the crimes at Arundel and Caterham, and lastly the means which were still in operation to find the criminals.
To all this she seemed to pay but scant attention, eyes and fingers being concentrated on her work. From her manner French never could tell whether she was really listening to him or not, though afterwards he usually found she had grasped every detail. When he had finished he waited eagerly for her comment. But she still remained silent, folding and tacking the corners of her work with apparently no thought for anything else in the world. At last however she spoke, and as her remark took the form of a question, his hopes bounded up.
“You think those three poor girls were all murdered by the same people?” she said slowly.
“Well, don’t you?” he answered. “All three were employed—”
“And Mr. Mitchell thinks so too?”
“Certainly he does. You see, if—”
“And both you and Mr. Mitchell think that they were murdered because they got hold of the secret of this gang?”
“To all intents and purposes, yes. We can’t tell whether the girls actually knew the secret, but they knew enough to be dangerous. We think Thurza Darke may have been followed to the Yard.”
Mrs. French slowly threaded her needle, giving to the operation immense thought and care. Then as if once again able to attend to trifles, she went on:
“If you’re right in that, it follows that these three are up to some pretty serious business. If they would sacrifice three lives to preserve their secret it must be a pretty dangerous or a pretty valuable one?”
“Well, of course, Emily. There can’t surely be any doubt of that?”
French was feeling slightly disappointed and a trifle irritated. This was not like his wife. He had hoped for something more illuminating. But he was not prepared for her next question.
“Have they stopped it?” she asked abruptly.
“Eh?” he returned. “Stopped it? Why, that’s just it. We have no reason to think so. And that’s what’s bothering us most of all. If some other poor girl—”
“Because if they haven’t stopped it it must still be going on.”
“Of course it’s going on, or at least we think so,” he said impatiently. What did she mean by harping on with these
