“Good morning, Ingram,” said Gilead. “I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve got a vaccination mark up my sleeve. Don’t say anything about it.”
The Superintendent stood some moments frowning after he was left alone.
“I wonder if he has,” he mused darkly. “It wouldn’t, in my opinion, be quite playing the game; but, there, angels like him must claim their privileges, I suppose.”
But, indeed, Gilead’s sleeve was innocent of the least suggestion of a hidden trump, and he was playing the game squarely and with the slightest of prospects of scoring anything out of it. He could not honestly convince himself that any real significance was to be extracted from the coincidence of the names, and what urged him alone to persevere, perhaps, was the inspired conviction of the little mother as to her son’s innocence. In any case he was pledged to her to sift the matter to its grounds, and in truth to himself he would not shirk that undertaking.
Calm and fearless in his sense of right, he bent his steps straightway to Hatton Garden and sought the office of Mr Abel Hamlin. He was fortunate in finding that gentleman at home in a tiny dark room on the second floor of a pile of offices so mouldy and decrepit that it seemed they must have fallen but for the sturdy support of the warehouses on either side. There were a pedestal desk in this cabin, a safe and some rows of littered shelves along the walls, and a table in a corner at which a young woman sat type-writing. She turned as the visitor entered, and revealed an extremely pretty face, but saucy in suggestion and over-dressed as to its hair, which was golden and plentiful. Mr Hamlin himself, rising from the desk, displayed the figure of a neat youngish gentleman, olive-complexioned, and dark-eyed, with thick brows and a little close moustache of strongest black. He spoke with the suspicion of a foreign accent, challenging the visitor with a “Yes, sir?”
Gilead accepted his surroundings with a glance of some surprise. Was it from dens like this that priceless gems were to be unearthed.
“I must apologize for intruding, Mr Hamlin,” he said, “especially as my motive is an unprofessional one. Permit me to introduce myself.”
The dealer glanced at the card offered him, started a little, smiled, and bowed.
“It is possible,” said Gilead, “that you may know me by name?”
“It is very possible, sir.”