“Do you remember who was her partner in that—that little trouble you mentioned?”
Mr Mullins leered horribly.
“There was quare tales,” he said—“I recollect that same. One would call him here, and another there; and a third would be whispering of a master in the Grammar School beyant. But that was just talking. Mother Carey could be close, when she wanted.”
“What was his name—the master’s?”
“It’s clane gone from me,” said Mr Mullins, blankly.
“One might trace it out at the school itself, perhaps?”
I turned to the policeman.
“Gone, too,” he said. “It was all closed before my time. There’s shops there now.”
So I was temporarily baffled; but, as, having invented something plausible to the men to account to them for my curiosity, I went on my way, I was taking a fierce oath in my heart that not stone nor briar, nor water nor fire should turn me now from a pursuit to which accident, or Luck if you like, had already hallooed me so promisingly. If this Mother Carey lived, she was my quarry. But where and how to find her!