“Jannaway,” said Mr Shapter, “we can’t undertake to breathe this atmosphere indefinitely. You’d better call a cab, and remove this woman.”
“Very well, sir.”
The suggestion wrought its desired effect. Mother Carey became all in a moment distinct to tearfulness.
“O good gentlemen, what is it you want of me? O that I should have lived to hear my deuced self accused of the devil and all! Is it anything about this young gentleman? O I’ll tell you the truth I will!”
“That’ll do, then,” said the detective. “It won’t serve you the worse perhaps in the long run. You’re pretty deep involved, you know, old lady; but mayhap there’s another deeper yet. Don’t be saying now you was never in collusion with Mr Dalston, because I know better. We’re coming to him in good time; but just for the present the question stands with you. Do you understand what I mean, a-linking of you and him together? Of course you do, a woman of your cleverness. Well, look at this young gentleman. Have you seen him afore?”
She whispered something, huddled into herself.
“What! more than once, perhaps,” said Mr Jannaway. “Right you are, I do believe. It was him, wasn’t it now, you played the dutiful grandmother to once upon a time, and ended by palming off on your daughter as her own very partic’lar offspring? That was a cute move, upon my word; and it paid you, didn’t it—paid you nigh as well as Mr Dalston did for putting that other out of the way?”
She uttered a thin screech, and sank upon her quaking ignoble old knees.
“I didn’t do it, good gentlemen,” she cried—“before God and the deuce of my poor lungs I didn’t. O I’ve always been expecting something of this sort to be charged to me, ever since him there came prying in with his rakings-up and smellings-out of old deuces. I never put anything out of the way I didn’t. My Georgie’s baby was dead already when Dalston brought the other. Ask the devil of a doctor if you don’t believe me.”
“Ah!” The detective shot a significant glance at Mr Shapter. “Dead was it—the fruits of the little mistake as your daughter had made with Mr Dalston, eh?”