“Permit me, dear mademoiselle, with these few flowers to make my apologies look prettier than my rudeness the other day. I shall not take the basement flat after all.”
The evening post brought me another letter, registered, containing five Bank of England twenty-pound notes, and another letter.
“You seemed, mademoiselle, to think so little of your great kindness to me on Tuesday, that I think you should have some souvenir of it. It would be idle of me to match my taste against yours, and with renewed gratitude I leave the choice to you.”
Neither letter bore any address or any signature. At first I was a little puzzled to make out how they had got my name. But there were many ways in which that might have been managed. A simple inquiry at the house agents would have been one of them. It was impossible to return their presents, and, to be quite honest, I doubt if I should have returned them if it had been possible. For the next few days I fed on peaches and bought things and lived gloriously.
* * * * * *
About a year later I read in a newspaper a curious story. A man had jumped overboard in mid-Channel and another had immediately gone over after him. It was supposed to be a gallant attempt at rescue, and the statement of a passenger that he saw the rescuer grip the other man by the throat as if to choke him was not credited. The men bore different names, but in personal appearance were remarkably like one another. The phrase used was, “They might have been brothers.” A description of the appearance left little doubt in my mind, and I could fully believe that passenger’s story.
V
THE SPIRITS OF HANFORD GARDENS
The windfall which came to me from my adventure with “The Man behind the Door” tempted me to engage some help in the domestic work of my little flat. I cooked admirably, but I did other things less well and they bored me; so I talked to my baker, a man of genial and mature wisdom, and he said that I couldn’t do better than take Minnie Saxe if I could get her. So I set out to engage Minnie Saxe; and in the end Minnie Saxe engaged me.
She was a girl of sixteen, as flat as a board, with a small bun of sand-coloured hair, a mouth like a steel vice, and an eye like a gimlet.