“Let me give you a word of warning, young man,” said Mr. Dyer, closing the cab door and looking in for a moment through the window at Emmett. “I don’t suppose it’s a punishable offence to leave a black bag on an old maid’s doorstep, but let me tell you, if it had not been for that black bag you might have got clean off with your spoil.”
Emmett, the irrepressible, had his answer ready. He lifted his hat ironically to Mr. Dyer; “You might have put it more neatly, guv’nor,” he said; “if I had been in your place I would have said: ‘Young man, you are being justly punished for your misdeeds; you have been taking off your fellow-creatures all your life long, and now they are taking off you.’ ”
Mr. Dyer’s duty that day did not end with the depositing of Harry Emmett in the local jail. The search through Emmett’s lodgings and effects had to be made, and at this he was naturally present. About a third of the lost jewellery was found there, and from this it was consequently concluded that his accomplices in the crime had considered that he had borne a third of the risk and of the danger of it.
Letters and various memoranda discovered in the rooms, eventually led to the detection of those accomplices, and although Lady Cathrow was doomed to lose the greater part of her valuable property, she had ultimately the satisfaction of knowing that each one of the thieves received a sentence proportionate to his crime.
It was not until close upon midnight that Mr. Dyer found himself seated in the train, facing Miss Brooke, and had leisure to ask for the links in the chain of reasoning that had led her in so remarkable a manner to connect the finding of a black bag, with insignificant contents, with an extensive robbery of valuable jewellery.
Loveday explained the whole thing, easily, naturally, step by step in her usual methodical manner.
“I read,” she said, “as I dare say a great many other people did, the account of the two things in the same newspaper, on the same day, and I detected, as I dare say a great many other people did not, a sense of fun in the principal actor in each incident. I notice while all people are agreed as to the variety of motives that instigate crime, very few allow sufficient margin for variety of character in the criminal. We are apt to imagine that he stalks about the world with a bundle of deadly motives under his arm, and cannot picture him at his work with a twinkle in his eye and a keen sense of fun, such as honest folk have sometimes when at work at their calling.”
Here Mr. Dyer gave a little grunt; it might have been either of assent or dissent.
Loveday went on:
“Of course, the ludicrousness of the diction of the letter found in the bag would be apparent to the most casual reader; to me the high falutin sentences sounded in addition strangely familiar; I had heard or read them somewhere I felt sure, although where I could not at first remember. They rang in my ears, and it was not altogether out of idle curiosity that I went to Scotland Yard to see the bag and its contents, and to copy, with a slip of tracing paper, a line or two of the letter. When I found that the handwriting of this letter was not identical with that of the translations found in the bag, I was confirmed in my impression that the owner of the bag was not the writer of the letter; that possibly the bag and its contents had been appropriated from some railway station for some distinct purpose; and, that purpose accomplished, the appropriator no longer wished to be burdened with it, and disposed of it in the readiest fashion that suggested itself. The letter, it seemed to me, had been begun with the intention of throwing the police off the scent, but the irrepressible spirit of fun that had induced the writer to deposit his clerical adjuncts upon an old maid’s doorstep had proved too strong for him here, and had carried him away, and the letter that was intended to be pathetic ended in being comic.”
“Very ingenious, so far,” murmured Mr. Dyer: “I’ve no doubt when the contents of the bag are widely made known through advertisements a claimant will come forward, and your theory be found correct.”
“When I returned from Scotland Yard,” Loveday continued, “I found your note, asking me to go round and see you respecting the big jewel robbery. Before I did so I thought it best to read once more the newspaper account of the case, so that I might be well up in its details. When I came to the words that the thief had written across the door of the safe, ‘To be Let, Unfurnished,’ they at once connected themselves in my mind with the ‘dying kiss to my Marchioness Mother,’ and the solemn warning against the racecourse and the bookmaker, of the black-bag letter-writer. Then, all in a flash, the whole thing became clear to me. Some two or three years back my professional duties necessitated my frequent attendance at certain low class penny-readings, given in the South London slums. At these penny-readings young shop-assistants, and others of their class, glad of an opportunity for exhibiting their accomplishments, declaim with great vigour; and, as a rule, select pieces which their very mixed audience might be supposed to appreciate. During my attendance at these meetings, it seemed to me that one book of selected readings was a great favourite among the reciters, and I took the trouble to buy it. Here it is.”
Here Loveday took from her cloak-pocket The Reciter’s Treasury, and handed it to her companion.
“Now,” she said, “if you will run your eye down the index column you will find the titles of those pieces to which I wish
