“Ah!” commented Mr. Dobb.
“But that ain’t the mystery. Then ’e give me another bob and a ’eavy little parcel to be left at the stage-door. It was addressed to Miss Margureety Delafayne, and on it was written in pencil, ‘From one ’oo repents.’ Now, seeing ’e was with ’er at the time, what did ’e want to send that there parcel to the theayter for? And what did that bit about repenting mean? Can you see any sense in it?”
“No,” said Mr. Dobb, churlishly and untruthfully.
EPISODE IX
THE GREEN EYES OF THE LITTLE BIRMINGHAM GOD
Mr. Horace Dobb sharply closed the tattered volume which had been occupying his leisure, and looked up as if something were momentarily dazzling him. And next he removed his slippered feet from the mantelshelf and very slowly and carefully described an arc with his heels until he was sitting erect in his chair, alertly yet contemplatively, and also with a suggestion of breathlessness, in the manner of one who is visited by an inspired idea.
For a full minute Mr. Dobb remained thus, and then he rose and shuffled out into his shop. Here he opened a cupboard to take from it a small metallic object. Returning to his parlour, he placed this object on the table, and it stood revealed as a posturing figure of tarnished brass, ostensibly Oriental in origin.
And now for a long, long while Mr. Dobb stared at this figure in deep meditation, with his eyelids twitching and flickering impatiently when, now and then, he found that his inventiveness had stampeded him into some mental cul-de-sac. And then he began to pace the narrow confines of the room, walking in a tense, rigid way, as though his thoughts were so delicately balanced on each other that the slightest disturbance of their equilibrium would send them scattering uselessly in all directions.
But at last he halted, nodded his head thrice with keen satisfaction at the idol on the table, and then came to the greatest animation, whistling, snapping his fingers, and even pirouetting a little.
“Green heyes and all, just like it says in the book,” he remarked, enigmatically.
And with that he bundled the idol back into its cupboard, and set forth to confabulate with Mr. Peter Lock at his place of employment.