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“Oh, he respects you all right. But he gets his back up wondering just how the trick is done. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye, and the Chief doesn’t like having his eye deceived. He likes to take things decently and in order, with plenty of time to think everything out a step at a time. When you get there in a flash of lightning he begins to suspect the unlawful arts.”
She smiled indulgently.
“When you have finished talking nonsense, Frank, you will perhaps let me tell you that my information about Thomasina and A
He laughed.
“Things are always so simple when they have been explained! She did mention that she had put in an advertisement. I didn’t see it myself. What did it say?”
Miss Silver pulled on the large ball which lurked in a knitting bag of gaily flowered chintz.
“ ‘A
“The names are A
He broke off suddenly to enquire, “Why are you looking at me like that? You can’t possibly be interested. I can assure you that nothing can be duller than the whole affair.”
She gave him her charming smile.
“Yet you have introduced the subject with care, and you are quite unable to let it drop.”
He had a half laughing, half rueful expression which took years off his age.
“You always see right through one. The case is dull, and A
Miss Silver shook her head in a very decided ma
“Oh, no, it would not have that effect at all. She would be pleased and excited, and her letters to Thomasina would be long and full. It did not happen like that.”
“Then the only possible spark of interest expires.”
“Yet you are interested.”
“I can’t imagine why I should be. There’s nothing to it- just a girl who has stopped writing.”
Miss Silver echoed his words in a very thoughtful ma
“Just a girl who has stopped writing.”
CHAPTER IV
A couple of days had passed when Miss Silver looked up from the letter she was writing and lifted the receiver of the table telephone. Inspector Abbott’s voice greeted her by name.
“Hullo! Here we are! Marvellous and beneficent instrument the telephone-except when it wakes you in the middle of the night and you wish that the progress of science had stopped short at rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. But, as you are about to remark, that isn’t what I rang you up to talk about. ‘Hail, vain deluding joys!’ and all the rest of it. Business before pleasure.”
“My dear Frank!”
“I know-I’m getting there. In the matter of Thomasina Elliot-”
Miss Silver said,
“You are not speaking from Scotland Yard.”
A suspicion of a laugh came to her along the wire.
“How right you are! The official style is more restrained. I am in a call-box. In the matter of Thomasina we appear to have got to a dead end. To start with, there isn’t any evidence that the girl A
“And Mrs. Dugdale’s household?”
“Impenetrability, as Humpty Dumpty remarked! There is a personal maid who sounds like a cross between a steel trap and an oyster. The other two-there really are two more-are both elderly, and wouldn’t demean themselves by getting mixed up with the police. Hobson opined they didn’t know anything but wouldn’t have talked if they did. And that is where you come in.”
Miss Silver said in a deprecatory ma
“May I ask in what capacity?”
She heard him laugh.
“Oh, strictly professional. Thomasina is coming to see you. She has come in for quite a lot of money from an aunt, and no expense is to be spared. I told her that if anyone could charm an oyster into speech, it was you. Seriously, you know, someone in that Dugdale lot must know something. Thumbscrews being out of date, there doesn’t seem to be any way of making them talk. A
“How did she go?”
“By bus, with a single suit-case which was all she brought with her. She had only been there a month, you know. She sent a box to Thomasina in Scotland and said she would write for it later. Well, she didn’t write.”
Miss Silver asked a pertinent question.
“Where was the bus going to?”
“That’s just what nobody knows. A
Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”
An hour or two later Thomasina Elliot sat in one of the curly walnut chairs and gazed at Miss Silver. She had been sitting there for not more than twenty-five minutes, but she had already told this dowdy little ex-governess quite a number of things which she had not seen fit to impart to Peter Brandon or to Detective Inspector Abbott.
Things about A