“That bow window on the ground floor,” French said in low tones, as he demonstrated with gestures how the ground might be terraced.
On his previous visit he had noted the exterior of the house, and by plotting the various elevations, he had deduced its probable plan. From this he was satisfied that the window in question belonged to Welland’s sitting room. No other had a large enough expanse of blank wall beside it for the necessary size of the room.
Freddie Ormsby acted with promptitude.
“Oh, daddy, see!” he cried in shrill tones. “Look where the cat is!” and before his scandalized parent could intervene, he had picked up a stone and sent it whizzing with unerring aim through the largest pane.
“Played, sir! Fine shot!” French whispered, then in loud tones: “Well, upon my soul, you little rascal! Look what you’ve done. What do you mean, sir, by such conduct?”
The door of No. 39 was opened by an elderly woman with an indignant countenance as an angry but apologetic gentleman and a scared, woebegone boy approached up its tiny drive.
“I’m afraid, madam,” said French, taking off his hat politely, “that an accident has occurred for which I am responsible. My son has so far forgotten himself as to throw a stone which unfortunately has broken your window. He has been warned about stone throwing again and again, and I’ll see that this time it will be a lesson to him. I can only offer you, madam, my apologies, and go at once for a glazier to make good the damage.”
The good lady, who had evidently been prepared to breathe threatenings and slaughter, on finding the wind thus taken out of her sails, became somewhat mollified.
“Oh, well, if that’s the way you put it, it will be all right,” she admitted, “though it did give me a start and no mistake, the stone coming through. But there,” she went on magnanimously, glancing at the frightened culprit, “you don’t need to say too much to ’im. Boys will be boys, that’s what I say. Boys will be boys.”
“It’s exceedingly kind of you to look at it like that,” French declared. “As I said, I can assure you it will be a lesson to him he will not soon forget. I hope nothing has been damaged inside the room?”
“Well, I ’aven’t looked yet. Better come in and see for yourself.”
“Thank you. And I think it will save time if I get a sample of the glass and measure the window.”
Having adjured “Cecil” to wait for him and not to get into any more mischief while his back was turned, French followed the housekeeper. The room, as he had imagined, was Welland’s sitting room. It was comfortably though not luxuriously furnished. In the window was a deep saddlebag armchair with beside it a table bearing some papers. Against one wall was a roll-top desk, with the cover down. A tantalus and a cigar cabinet stood on a second table. Many shelves of books hung on the wall.
“The desk,” thought French, as he expressed his relief that no further damage had been done and took his measurements. Two minutes later he withdrew in an atmosphere of politeness and regrets.
“You did that well, old man,” he congratulated his now grinning companion, when at last they were clear of Acacia Avenue. “You shall have five bob and the best lunch I can get you.”
At the station they met Ormsby, clad in a glazier’s well-worn overalls and with smudges of paint on his cap.
“He did it fine,” French greeted him, “you’ll be having the lad in the films yet. There’s the size of the pane and there’s what it was glazed with. Have you got what’ll do it?”
“No,” said Ormsby, “but there’s a glazier’s down the street. I’ll get it there. It was the room you wanted all right?”
“Yes, and there’s a desk in it that you’ll have to go through. How’ll you do if the old woman sticks in the room?”
Ormsby smiled. “Trust me for that, Mr. French. You may not have known it, but it sometimes takes a terrible lot of hot water to glaze a pane. I’ll keep her boiling up fresh kettles.”
Three hours later Ormsby knocked at the door of French’s room at the Yard.
“There’s absolutely nothing there, Mr. French,” he began, as he took the seat to which the other pointed. “I had a bit of luck, and I’ve been through practically the whole house and there’s not a thing that you could get hold of. In the first place that old woman’s a bit deaf and that helped me.”
“I noticed it,” said French.
“Yes. Well, I went to the door and said I was the man come to glaze the pane and she had me in at once and I got to work. She hung about for a minute or two, but I didn’t speak, and when she saw me getting at it, she said she would be next door in the kitchen if I wanted anything and went out.”
“Lucky for you.”
“Wasn’t it, sir? But better than that, she was washing clothes and as long as I could hear the suds going I knew I was safe. I made some mess round the window to show I was working and then I went for the desk. It was an easy lock and I had it open in twenty seconds. I went through everything and there’s not a paper nor any other thing that shouldn’t be there. All absolutely OK.”
“Pity,” French interjected.
“Isn’t it? Then I made some more mess and had a look round the room and a quick run through the books. Then the old lady came in to see how I was getting on.”
He paused, and French nodded his appreciation of the situation.
“She seemed satisfied with the amount of the mess and went back to the kitchen without speaking and I heard the washing start again. I thought I might take a bit of risk, so
