"Very well, go on."
"He came downstairs and went out and I never saw him again. When you came and the murder was discovered and knowing as I did that I had my own scheme on and that one of your splits might pinch me, I got a bit rattled. I went downstairs to the hall and the first thing I saw lying on the table was a letter. It was addressed to me."
He paused and T. X. nodded.
"Go on," he said again.
"I couldn"t understand how it came to be there, but as I"d been in the kitchen most of the evening except when I was seeing my pal outside to tell him the job was off for that night, it might have been there before you came. I opened the letter. There were only a few words on it and I can tell you those few words made my heart jump up into my mouth, and made me go cold all over."
"What were they!" asked T. X.
"I shall not forget them, sir. They"re sort of permanently fixed in my brain," said the man earnestly; "the note started with just the figures "A. C. 274.""
"What was that!" asked T. X.
"My convict number when I was in Dartmoor Prison, sir."
"What did the note say?"
""Get out of here quick"--I don"t know who had put it there, but I"d evidently been spotted and I was taking no chances. That"s the whole story from beginning to end. I accidentally happened to meet the young lady, Miss Holland--Miss Bartholomew as she is--and followed her to her house in Portman Place. That was the night you were there."
T. X. found himself to his intense annoyance going very red.
"And you know no more?" he asked.
"No more, sir--and if I may be struck dead--"
"Keep all that sabbath talk for the chaplain," commended T. X., and they took away Mr. Fisher, not an especially dissatisfied man.
That night T. X. interviewed his prisoner at Cannon Row police station and made a few more enquiries.
"There is one thing I would like to ask you," said the girl when he met her next morning in Green Park.
"If you were going to ask whether I made enquiries as to where your habitation was," he warned her, "I beg of you to refrain."
She was looking very beautiful that morning, he thought. The keen air had brought a colour to her face and lent a spring to her gait, and, as she strode along by his side with the free and careless swing of youth, she was an epitome of the life which even now was budding on every tree in the park.
"Your father is back in town, by the way," he said, "and he is most anxious to see you."
She made a little grimace.
"I hope you haven"t been round talking to father about me."
"Of course I have," he said helplessly; "I have also had all the reporters up from Fleet Street and given them a full description of your escapades."
She looked round at him with laughter in her eyes.
"You have all the manners of an early Christian martyr," she said. "Poor soul! Would you like to be thrown to the lions?"
"I should prefer being thrown to the demnition ducks and drakes," he said moodily.
"You"re such a miserable man," she chided him, "and yet you have everything to make life worth living."
"Ha, ha!" said T. X.
"You have, of course you have! You have a splendid position. Everybody looks up to you and talks about you. You have got a wife and family who adore you--"
He stopped and looked at her as though she were some strange insect.
"I have a how much?" he asked credulously.
"Aren"t you married?" she asked innocently.
He made a strange noise in his throat.
"Do you know I have always thought of you as married," she went on; "I often picture you in your domestic circle reading to the children from the Daily Megaphone those awfully interesting stories about Little Willie Waterbug."
He held on to the railings for support.
"May we sit down?" he asked faintly.
She sat by his side, half turned to him, demure and wholly adorable.
"Of course you are right in one respect," he said at last, "but you"re altogether wrong about the children."
"Are you married!" she demanded with no evidence of amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Didn"t you know?" he asked.
She swallowed something.
"Of course it"s no business of mine and I"m sure I hope you are very happy."
"Perfectly happy," said T. X. complacently. "You must come out and see me one Sat.u.r.day afternoon when I am digging the potatoes. I am a perfect devil when they let me loose in the vegetable garden."
"Shall we go on?" she said.
He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he thought she was vexed with him at his fooling.
"I haven"t made you cross, have I?" he asked.
"Oh no," she replied.
"I mean you don"t believe all this rot about my being married and that sort of thing?"
"I"m not interested," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, "not very much. You"ve been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I wasn"t grateful. Of course, I don"t care whether you"re married or not, it"s nothing to do with me, is it?"
"Naturally it isn"t," he replied. "I suppose you aren"t married by any chance?"