"If," she said, fumbling in her pocket for a key, and placing one by one upon the table the most extraordinary collection of oddments that female pocket was ever called upon to hold, "if, when we come into this house to retire and live genteel, after Lemon had sold his business, I'd have known what was to come out of my notion to let the second floor front to a single man, I'd have had my feet cut off before I'd done it. But I did it for the best, to keep down the egspenses. Here it is, sir."
[CHAPTER VII.]
DEVLIN'S FIRST INTRODUCTION INTO THE MYSTERY.
She had found the key she had been searching for, and now she opened a mahogany desk, from which she took a penny memorandum-book. She handed it to me in silence, and I turned over the leaves. Most of the pages were filled with weekly accounts of her lodgers, in which "ham and eggs, 8d .;" "a rasher, 5d .;" "chop, 8d .;" "two boyled eggs, 3d .;" "bloater, 2d .;" "crewet, 4d .;" and other such-like items appeared again and again. There was also, at the foot of pages, receipts for payment, "Paid, Fanny Lemon." And this, in the midst of the presumably tragic business upon which we were engaged, brought to my mind an anomaly which had often occurred to me, namely, that landladies should present their accounts to their lodgers in penny memorandum-books, should receive the money, should sign a receipt, and then take away the books containing their acknowledgment of payment. In view of the grave issues impending, it is a trivial matter to comment upon, but it was really a relief to me to dwell for a moment or two upon it. At the end of the memorandum-book which I was looking through were five or six leaves which had not been utilised for lodgers' accounts, and these Mrs. Lemon had pressed into service for her diary. She was a bad writer and an indifferent speller, and the entries were brief, and, to me, at that point, incomprehensible.
"I see, Fanny," I said "that your first entry is made on a Thursday, a good many weeks ago."
"Yes, sir."
"I must confess I can make nothing of it. It states that Lemon rose at eight o'clock on that morning, that he had breakfast at half-past eight, that he ate four slices of bread and butter, two rashers of bacon, and two eggs----"
"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Lemon, interrupting me. "He had his appetite then, had Lemon! He ain't got none now to speak of."
"And," I continued, "that he went out of the house at nine o'clock with a person whose name is unintelligible. It commences, I think, with a D."
"D-e-v-l-i-n," said Mrs. Lemon, her eyes almost starting out of her head as she spelt the name, letter by letter.