CHAPTER VI
About nine o’clock that evening Mr. Inspector Sharpe sat in his little office, running his eye over the records of a day’s departures from the steep and thorny path on the part of the very mixed and sorely tried people of London. At that hour he was on duty also on emergency cases that might be reported at the ever-expectant Yard. So he glanced at his reports casually, as one does who looks to be interrupted at any moment. The bells in the steeples were chiming nine when a constable entered, conducting a very agitated young woman who showed not only the usual nervousness of the layman in police offices, but also a great deal of not very clearly defined personal anxiety.
“Well? Well?” asked the Inspector, without looking up from his reports.
“I beg your pardon—but is this—?” asked a timid voice in return.
“Ah, a lady,” exclaimed the Inspector on seeing her. “Beg pardon, ma’am. Have a seat, ma’am. And now what can I do for you?”
“Is this where they report things?” asked the girl apologetically.
“Bless us all,” cried out Sharpe, with a smile; “they report some things here, miss. Who are you, now?”
“Does it matter? Must I say who I am?” inquired the lady anxiously.
“Really, you know, I can’t say as to that, you know, miss,” replied the Inspector, with a merriment which he frowned at when the constable began to join in it. “If you have something to report, I must know who it is as reports it, wouldn’t you say? But there, now, miss, don’t you be afraid of nothing. Out with it. What seems to be a-troublin’ of such a quiet-looking young person as you, miss?”
“Well,” answered the girl, much encouraged by the humanity of the terrible officer whose uniform and surroundings appalled her at first, “I just wanted to report that he did go out and I followed him, but he walked so fast that I couldn’t keep up with him, and he disappeared around the corner, please, sir.”
“He did, eh?” laughed the Inspector. “You wouldn’t have no objection to mentionin’ the gent’s name, now, would you? Must have somebody’s name.”
“Why, you know who I mean,” answered the girl, with surprise, as it did not of course occur to her that a number of young women had been asked to follow strange gentlemen about the streets that very evening. “You know who it was—the foreign gentleman, you know.”
The Inspector burst into a hearty laugh at this, but said sharply to his subordinate: “Bellows, if you laugh again, I’ll report you. No, miss, I really can’t say as I do know just who you mean. You see, we has such a lot of foreign gents to look after one way or another, that we gets ’em sort o’ mixed like, sometimes, you know. Who was your particular foreign gent and why did he walk so fast and why was you so keen to catch ’im?”
“This is very strange,” replied the girl, beginning to think that, after all, she had been played upon by that horrid, suave thief. “Mr. Ferret told me to come here and tell you all about it, you know. At Mr. Maxwell Fair’s, you know—Carlton House Terrace—please say you understand.”
“Ah, I see,” exclaimed Sharpe, at once showing the keenest interest and bristling with alert readiness both to hear and to act. “It’s Ferret, is it? Bellows, go and ask Ferret to come here.” The constable departed to do as he was bid in spite of a gesture of protest from Miss Mettleby and her statement that Mr. Ferret was not here but at Mr. Fair’s house.
“Now, miss,” began the Inspector, when Bellows closed the door after him, “how do you come to be interested in this Spanish conspiracy? It was Señor Mendes that you followed, eh? Why? Speak out, now, plain and square. It’s an ugly business for the likes of you to get mixed up in.”
Miss Mettleby heard all this with a rapidly deepening feeling of guilty complicity in some dark plot, and yet, beneath this sickening dread, she felt a vague hope that now she would glean some intelligent idea of the mystery into which she, Mr. Fair—all her world, had been so suddenly plunged by the hurrying events of the past two hours.
“Oh, you see, sir,” she began; “I assure you that I know absolutely nothing at all about what Mr. Ferret was about—nothing. I am the governess in Mr. Fair’s family, that’s all. And this evening when the family were at dinner Mr. Ferret came into the library—nearly frightening me to death—and told me that a foreign gentleman was in our house who intended some sort of mischief to my kind employer. So he asked me to watch the street door and to follow the man if he should go out before Mr. Ferret returned from telegraphing or something. And, of course, the whole thing is non——”
Her pitiful little plot to divert police suspicion from her knight until the horrible evidence of someone’s guilt—not his, not his!—could be removed was nipped at this point by the entrance, to her unspeakable surprise, of Ferret himself, smiling and unruffled.
“Ferret, do you know this young lady?” asked the inspector perfunctorily.
“Yes, sir,” replied Ferret, with a salute—military to his chief and cavalier to the trembling Kate. “She’s the governess, sir, at Mr. Maxwell Fair’s. How are you again, miss? You are here rather earlier than I looked for you. She’s a regular corker, sir.”
“Silence!” snapped the Inspector, to whom discipline was all. “This young person was telling me that she watched as you requested. Go on, miss.”
“Well, Mr. Ferret had scarcely gone out when the foreign gentleman passed out of the street door and I immediately followed him,” went on poor Kate, with oozing hope that her blundering lie would be believed, now that that gimlet-eyed Ferret was here to observe her. “The man crossed the square and walked quickly down the next street.”
She stopped. Ferret seemed to be whistling in mild but growing unbelief—conduct which he suddenly abandoned on receiving a wireless message of caution from the Inspector. The nimble mind of Ferret caught his superior’s point at once, so he fell in with his policy and said, as if to encourage Kate to proceed bravely with her transparent and useful lie: “Didn’t I tell you he would do so?”
“Be quiet, Ferret!” cried Sharpe, fearing that Ferret would develop some new indiscretion. “Go on, miss, go on. You saw the gent turn the corner?”
“Yes,” replied Kate, with fresh courage; “he turned the corner and I ran after him. There were many people in the narrow street into which he had turned, but I kept him in view and——”
“And you jumped into the next cab as quick as a flash—” put in Ferret, when he noticed that her powers of creation were ebbing, “and followed him until you saw him go into—go on, go on, miss—you’re great, you are.”
“Alas, no,” sighed Kate, fearing to venture to be so specific as to locate the mysterious man in a definite house anywhere. “Alas, no. When I reached Pall Mall he had disappeared.”
“Oh, dam—that is, you know, I beg pardon—what a pity you missed him,” exclaimed Ferret, rapidly calculating what her game was.
“It is only just gone nine,” remarked the Inspector sternly. “When was it that you were at Mr. Fair’s house, Ferret? This is very strange.”
It was Ferret’s turn now to fear that the course of affairs reflected on his discretion, and, while he could hardly believe that the Inspector had failed to perceive that the governess was fibbing, he could not risk being thought a bungler, for Sharpe was a man of few words, quick action, and little given to reopening cases once he had decided them.
“I am afraid the young lady has made a mistake,” Ferret continued carefully. “It was dark and she probably mistook somebody else for the foreign gent. You see, sir, I changed my mind and didn’t go to telephone, but stood immediately opposite Mr. Fair’s house until ten minutes ago, and the gent had not come out of the door—that I can swear to.”
Ferret hoped that this bit of information would so shake the girl’s confidence in her story that she would begin a new and contradictory one.
“But he did go out,” sobbed Kate, truly shaken, but with a woman’s determination to see a thing through; “I say he did go out. Oh, Mr. Inspector, tell me that you believe me! There is no foreign gentleman at Mr. Fair’s house—so it will be very foolish for you to send any of those awful detectives there. Do, do believe me! I tell you, sir, that there has been no foreign gentleman at our house, and anyway I saw him go out.”
“Ferret, come into my private office a minute,” said Sharpe, trying to retain his customary solemn and impressive expression. “Please wait here for us, miss. Nobody will come in to molest you.”
“My God, what have I done now?” cried Kate, when the two terrible men, with their cold, businesslike, lynx ways, had gone. “But he did not do it—he did NOT!” she moaned as she leaned her poor reeling head upon the edge of the Inspector’s desk.
They came back after a few minutes.
“We believe your story, miss,” began the Inspector kindly; “and Ferret will be severely reprimanded in the morning for having annoyed you by going into your house. Now tell me anything more that you may know about this silly rumor—but be careful what you say, for you may have to swear to the truth of it all in a court of law. I shall take down what you say. Come, now, what is your name?”
“Kate Mettleby,” she replied, with uneasiness as she thought of perjury; “but really, truly, honestly, there has been no murder at our house, so I don’t see why you should want me to——”
“Of course not, of course not,” interrupted the Inspector, with a cordiality and candor that brought her immense relief; “but, you see, the law compels us to look sharp into the ways of all foreigners. The law is that all foreigners are guilty until they can prove themselves innocent—which is very seldom possible.”
Ferret made a little movement as if he were going to protest against quite such a bald bit of cruel treatment of an innocent baby, but he remembered his duty and held his tongue.
“Oh, is that the law?” asked Kate, with wide eyes. “But surely there must be some foreigners who are as good as English people.”
“There may be,” admitted the Inspector sorrowfully; “but the law don’t believe it if it can help it. Now, Miss Mettleby, governesses and servants has opportunities. They sometimes hear and see a good deal that is said and done by the gentry. Mr. and Mrs. Fair never quarrel, I suppose, about a party by the name of Mendes, do they?”
The shrewd officer of the law regretted his words as soon as he had spoken them, for Kate sprang to her feet, burning with shame and indignation.
“You mistake, sir!” she cried fiercely. “I am not a servant, but the friend of Mrs. Maxwell Fair. And if I were a servant, do you suppose—I despise your insulting innuendo! And I tell you that Mr. Fair is utterly incapable of the crime which I can see that your bloodhound, Mr. Ferret there, thinks he has committed. I am going.”
“You are going in a moment—when I allow you to do so,” returned the Inspector, anxious to retrieve his mistake, but also desirous to let her understand that he had authority. “Now don’t be foolish, miss. You fly off into a rage quite unnecessarily, I assure you. Mr. Ferret neither makes nor implies any charge of any sort against Mr. Fair, you know. Now be calm and simply answer my questions—you will have to answer them here or in court, remember. You have heard Mr. and Mrs. Fair speak of one Don Pablo Mendes, I suppose?”
“Yes—many times, but always with kindness,” replied Kate stiffly.
“Good,” said Sharpe benignly. “Now we are getting on. And this Don Pablo Mendes has been at the house frequently, has he not?”
“Never, as far as I know, until today,” answered Kate, still far from mollified. “Mrs. Fair has been—but, no, I sha’n’t say that.”
“Oh, I say, don’t half say things in that way, you know,” exclaimed the Inspector, nettled. Then, coaxingly: “You see, miss, when a witness says half of a thing, the law compels us to piece it out as we think best. So out with it. Mrs. Fair has seen Mendes somewhere away from home—you were going to say?”
“Yes,” replied Kate, scarlet with shame at the man’s seeming implication, and not a little annoyed by his almost supernatural ability to piece out, as he put it, her half sentences; “but, sir, I’d have you understand that Mrs. Fair always consulted Mr. Fair before meeting Mr. Mendes—always.”
“No doubt,” answered Sharpe, with a look of lofty elevation above her implied rebuke. “Now, miss, don’t please see more than is in my words. And don’t be afraid either. Remember, it is this Spanish gent, Mendes, and not either your Mr. or Mrs. Fair, that we are looking for.”
“Thank God for that,” murmured Kate, beginning to break down visibly.
Sharpe, on a wink from Ferret, waited a few seconds while Ferret fetched a glass of water, which the wretched girl drank eagerly—with a poor little smile of thanks that made the susceptible Ferret wish Mendes had never been born. This diversion greatly cleared the atmosphere at once.
“Do you happen to know who Mendes is and why we want him?” asked the Inspector finally, with the air of a gossip rather than that of an inquisitor, which had the effect he desired, for Kate looked up fearlessly now.
“I have no idea,” she answered promptly, glad to be able again to tell the truth. Then, adding with the former tone of apology to truth: “All I ask is that you send nobody to our house—now that Mr. Mendes has gone away from it. You won’t, will you? Please, please, do not!”
“It would be nonsense to look for him when he’s gone, wouldn’t it?” laughed Sharpe. “And you know we never do nonsensical things when we know it. That will do, I think, miss. You may go, if you wish.”
“Thank you, sir,” gasped Kate, with alacrity. “And don’t you see that if Mendes has committed some great crime he would be very likely to commit suicide? So I don’t see why you should think that—now, don’t laugh.”
Her last words were addressed to Ferret, who did not know that she had an eye on him. When she closed the door and they heard her pass into the outer passage, it was with anything but a smile that Ferret looked up at his chief and said: “Well, by all that’s holy—did you ever?”