Part 35 (1/2)

”It's the luck,” said the other philosophically, ”and I haven't done with her by any means. Besides we've still got a chance of pulling of the big thing, Harry. I reckon she's good for a hundred or two, anyway.”

At six o'clock on the following afternoon, a man dressed in a dark overcoat, with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes stood nonchalantly by the curb near where the buses stop at Regent Street slapping his hand gently with a folded copy of the Westminster Gazette.

That none should mistake his Liberal reading, he stood as near as possible to a street lamp and so arranged himself and his att.i.tude that the minimum of light should fall upon his face and the maximum upon that respectable organ of public opinion. Soon after six he saw the girl approaching, out of the tail of his eye, and strolled off to meet her.

To his surprise she pa.s.sed him by and he was turning to follow when an unfriendly hand gripped him by the arm.

”Mr. Fisher, I believe,” said a pleasant voice.

”What do you mean?” said the man, struggling backward.

”Are you going quietly!” asked the pleasant Superintendent Mansus, ”or shall I take my stick to you'?”

Mr. Fisher thought awhile.

”It's a cop,” he confessed, and allowed himself to be hustled into the waiting cab.

He made his appearance in T. X.'s office and that urbane gentleman greeted him as a friend.

”And how's Mr. Fisher!” he asked; ”I suppose you are Mr. Fisher still and not Mr. Harry Gilcott, or Mr. George Porten.”

Fisher smiled his old, deferential, deprecating smile.

”You will always have your joke, sir. I suppose the young lady gave me away.”

”You gave yourself away, my poor Fisher,” said T. X., and put a strip of paper before him; ”you may disguise your hand, and in your extreme modesty pretend to an ignorance of the British language, which is not creditable to your many attainments, but what you must be awfully careful in doing in future when you write such epistles,” he said, ”is to wash your hands.”

”Wash my hands!” repeated the puzzled Fisher.

T. X. nodded.

”You see you left a little thumb print, and we are rather whales on thumb prints at Scotland Yard, Fisher.”

”I see. What is the charge now, sir!”

”I shall make no charge against you except the conventional one of being a convict under license and failing to report.”

Fisher heaved a sigh.

”That'll only mean twelve months. Are you going to charge me with this business?” he nodded to the paper.

T. X. shook his head.

”I bear you no ill-will although you tried to frighten Miss Bartholomew.

Oh yes, I know it is Miss Bartholomew, and have known all the time. The lady is there for a reason which is no business of yours or of mine.

I shall not charge you with attempt to blackmail and in reward for my leniency I hope you are going to tell me all you know about the Kara murder. You wouldn't like me to charge you with that, would you by any chance!”

Fisher drew a long breath.

”No, sir, but if you did I could prove my innocence,” he said earnestly.