“Dear, dear!” our hostess observed, shocked apparently at this close proximity to the criminal classes.
“Rather good what the chap said when he’d been sentenced,” drawled Charlie Pryce. “See it? Well, he bowed to the judge, and then he bowed to the jury, and smiled, and shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘The risks of the profession, gentlemen! Au revoir!’ Jolly good cheek!” Charlie’s round red face—he is very well nourished, as they say at inquests—beamed almost sympathetically.
“I suppose he owes his nickname to his professional dexterity?” said I.
“Suppose so,” agreed Charlie.
“No,” said Mrs Pryce, who was at the other end of the table. “His name is James——”
“Yes, James Painter Walsh,” interposed the Major, accurate always.
“But he was called ‘Slim-Fingered’ because he had beautiful hands with very slender tapering fingers.”
“Hallo, Minnie!” cried Pryce. “How do you know that?”
“He told me himself,” she answered with a smile and the hint of a blush. “I crossed from America with him the time he was arrested at Queenstown for the bond robbery, and—well, we got acquainted. Of course, nobody knew who he was.”
A torrent of questions overwhelmed Mrs Pryce. She had achieved fame—she had known the hero of the last great jewel robbery. She spoke of him from first-hand knowledge. The unrivalled attraction of crime—crime in the grand manner—fascinates us all. But she wouldn’t say much.