“Why not? I’m pretty.”
Gilead shrugged his shoulders.
“O!” she said, “I’ve mental gifts too—don’t you ever doubt it”—and then she added, seemingly irrelevantly: “I hate that lady-clerk.”
Gilead saw that he had to conciliate a perversity, and he lent himself to the task with all the humour and tact of which he was capable. One could regard life from Flushing, he perceived, with as much worldly acumen as from London. He talked and talked about momentous nothings, until he had won her to a train of interests outside their individual selves; nevertheless he felt curiously abashed and humiliated all the time. He shied instinctively from any allusion to her story, or comment on her proposed future proceedings; and he welcomed the lights of Victoria Station, when at length they ran into them, with a sigh of most heartfelt relief.
He was a moment or two in following her out of the carriage—and then he perceived that she was standing impassively in the custody of a couple of plain-clothes constables, one of whom was known to him.
“Nicked,” she said, “and no mistake. I wonder if that lady-clerk of yours had a hand in this.”
“It’s all right, Mr Balm,” said the detective—he held the red morocco bag secure in his hand—“you didn’t know what you were doing, sir, but we’re obliged to you none the less. We guessed you would return by this train, and we’ve been looking out for you.”
“What’s in the bag?” said Gilead, recovering himself with a gasp.
“Why,” said the detective, “that’s it. Just the proceeds, sir, of the great jewellery robbery from Kruier’s shop in Brussels. We’d been wondering where they’d gone; and now we know. Come along, Miss Topsy. We’ll let you hear further about it by and by, Mr Balm.”
She turned, and blew a kiss over her shoulder to Gilead.