"It's more than I dare. I should lose the best customer I ever had in my life. He made things as clear as can be when he first come into the 'ouse. 'Never,' he ses to me, 'under any circumstances whatever, let me see you going upstairs to my rooms unless I call you. Never let me ketch you prying about. If I do, you shall 'ear of it in a way you won't like.'"
Constable Nightingale was silent a few moments, and then he said, briskly, "Let's us go and hunt up that cat."
But although they searched the basement through they could not find it.
"Perhaps," suggested Constable Wigg, "it got out of the house when we opened the street-door just now."
"Perhaps," assented Constable Nightingale, laconically.
Then they ascended the stairs to the ground floor, Constable Nightingale examining very carefully the marks of the cat's paws on the oilcloth.
"Do you see, Mrs. Middlemore? Blood. There's no mistaking it. And I'm hanged if it doesn't go upstairs to the first floor."
"You're not going up, Mr. Nightingale?" asked Mrs. Middlemore, under her breath, laying her hand on his arm.
"If I know myself," said Constable Nightingale, patting her hand, "I am. Whatever happens, it's my duty and Wigg's to get at the bottom of this. What else did you call us in for?"
"To be sure," said Mrs. Middlemore, helplessly, "but if you have any feeling for me, speak low."