Mrs. Jiro heaved a great sigh of relief.
"My gracious!" she cried, "you did startle me. I can"t bear to hear the name of Ipswich nowadays. I was married from there."
"Indeed!" said Brett, with polite interest.
"Yes; and my people are always hunting me up and making a row because I married Mr. Jiro. Sometimes they make me that ill that I feel half inclined to go with him to j.a.pan. He is always worrying me to leave London, but the more I hear about j.a.pan the less I fancy it."
"Ah, my own little _gan_--" broke in her husband.
"There you go again," she snapped. "Calling me a _gan_--a goose, indeed!
Now, Mr. Brett, how would you like to be called a wild goose?"
"I have often deserved it," he said.
"You do not understand," chirped Jiro. "In j.a.pan the goose is beautiful, elegant. It flies fast like a white spilit."
His English was almost perfect, but in words containing a rolled "r" he often subst.i.tuted an "l."
"I understand enough to keep away from j.a.pan, a place where they have an earthquake every five minutes, and people live in paper houses. Besides, look at the size of your women-folk. Just imagine me, Mr. Brett, walking about among those little dolls, like a turkey among tom-t.i.ts."
"We give fat people much admilation," said Jiro.
"Nummie, I do hate that word fat. I can"t help being tall and well developed; but it is only short women who become "fat"."
She hissed the word venomously, as if she possessed the scorpion"s fabled power to sting herself. Evidently Mrs. Jiro dreaded corpulence more than earthquakes.
Brett had never previously met such a strangely a.s.sorted couple. He would willingly have prolonged his visit for mere amus.e.m.e.nt, but he was compelled to return to the cause of his presence. Unless he asked direct questions he would make no progress. He took from his pocket-book the drawing made in the Black Museum, and handed it to the j.a.panese, saying:
"Would you mind telling me the meaning of that?"
Jiro screwed his queer little eyes upon the scrawling characters. The methods of writing in the Far East, being pictorial and inexact, require scrutiny of the context before a given sentence can be correctly interpreted.
The little man made no trouble about it, however.
"They are old chalacters," he said. "In j.a.pan we joke a lot. Evely sign has sevelal meanings. This can be lead two ways. It is a plovelb, and says, "A new field gives a small clop," or "Human life is but fifty years." Where did you see it?"
"On the blade of the Ko-Katana that killed Sir Alan Hume-Frazer," answered Brett.
And now he experienced a fresh difficulty. The j.a.panese face is exceedingly expressive. When a native of the Island Empire smiles or scowls, exhibits surprise or fear, he apparently does these things with his whole soul. Such facial plasticity provides far more effective concealment of real emotions than the phlegmatic indifference of the Briton, who, in the words of Emerson, requires "pitchforks or the cry of "fire!"" to arouse him.
It is possible to throw an Englishman off his guard by a shrewd thrust; but Mr. Numagawa Jiro was one of those persons whose lineaments would reveal the same amount of pain over a cut finger as a broken leg.
Nevertheless, Brett"s reply did unquestionably make him jump, and even Mrs. Jiro"s bulging features became anxious.
"Is that possible?" said the j.a.panese. "It is velly stlange the police gentleman did not tell me about it."
"He did not know of it until to-day," explained Brett, "and that is why I am here now. It is the motto of some important j.a.panese family, is it not?"
"It is a plovelb," repeated Jiro, who evidently intended to take thought.
"So I understand, but used in this way it represents a family, a clan?"
"I do not know."
"What! A man so interested in his country"s art as to go to an out-of-the-way English provincial town merely to see a small knife, must surely be able to decide such a trivial matter as the use of mottoes on sword blades!"
Mr. Jiro"s excellent knowledge of English seemed to fail him, but his wife took up the defence.
"My husband had more to think about in Ipswich than a small knife, Mr.
Brett."
"Very much more, but it was the knife which brought him to the place. He carried the major attraction away with him."
Mrs. Jiro thought this sounded nice. She turned to her husband:
"Why don"t you tell the gentleman all you know about it, Nummie?"
The little man looked at her curiously before he spoke to the barrister.
"I have nothing to tell," he said. "I told the police all that they asked me. That was a velly old Ko-Katana, a hundred yeals old. It was made by a famous altist. I have told you the meaning of the liting. That is all I know."
"Why did you give your name at Ipswich as Okasaki?" demanded Brett.
"Oh, that is vely easy. Okosaki is my family name. You English people say it quicker than Numaguwa Jiro, so I give it. But when I got mallied I used my light name. j.a.panese law does not pelmit the change of names now. My ploper name is Numagawa Jiro"--which he p.r.o.nounced "Jilo."
"You told the detective at Ipswich that the device on the handle represented the setting sun. How did you know the sun was setting, and not rising?"
It was a haphazard shot. The description was Hume"s, not Winter"s.
Again the j.a.panese paused before answering.
"It was shown by the way in which the gold was used. j.a.panese altists have symbols for ideas. That is one."
"Thank you. I imagined you recognised the device, and could speak off-hand in the matter. By the way, do you use a type-writer?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Jiro. "My husband is clever at all that sort of thing, and when he found the people could not read his writing he bought a machine."
"I have sold it again," interfered Jiro, after a hasty glance round the room, "and I am going to buy another."
Mrs. Jiro rose to stir the fire unnecessarily.
"They are most useful," said Brett. "Which make do you prefer?"
"They are all vely much alike," answered the j.a.panese, "but I am going to buy a Yost or a Hammond."
"I am very much obliged to you for receiving me at this late hour," said the barrister, rising, "but before I go allow me to compliment you on your remarkable knowledge of English. I am sure you are indebted to your good lady for your idiomatic command of the language."
"I studied it for yeals in j.a.pan--" began Jiro, but in vain, for his very much better half resented the word "idiomatic."