Captain Francis Newcombe smiled without mirth.
"My dear Mrs. Wickes," he said evenly, "you know all about Polly. I distinctly remember bringing you the letter she enclosed for you in mine ten days ago, because I distinctly remember that after you had read it I watched you tear it up. And as your education is such that you cannot write in return, I also distinctly remember that you gave me messages for her which I was to incorporate in my own reply. Since then I have not heard from Polly."
The woman raised herself suddenly on her elbow, and, her face contorted, shook her fist.
"My dear Mrs. Wickes!" she mimicked furiously through a burst of coughing. "Yer a cool 'un, yer are. That's wot yer says, yer stands there an' smiles like a bloomin' hangel, an' yer says, my dear Mrs. Wickes! Curse yer, I knows more abaht yer than yer thinks for. Three years I've watched yer, an' hif I've kept my tongue to meself that don't say I don't know wot I knows."
"Indeed!" Captain Francis Newcombe shrugged his shoulders. He smiled slightly. "Then I should say, if it were true, that it is sometimes dangerous, Mrs. Wickes—to know even a little about some things."
The woman rocked in the bed, and hugged her thin bosom against a spasm of coughing that came near to strangulation.
"Bah!" she shouted, when she could get her breath. "I ain't afraid of yer any more. Damn yer, I'm dyin' anyhow! It's nothin' to you wiv yer smug smile, except yer glad I'll be out of the wye—an'—an', Gawd, it ain't nothin' to me either. I'm sick, of it all, an' I'm glad, I am; but afore I goes I wanter know wot abaht Polly. Wot'd yer tyke her awye for three years ago?"
"For the price of two quid paid weekly to a certain Mrs. Wickes, who is Polly's mother," said Captain Francis Newcombe composedly; "and with which the said Mrs. Wickes has swum in gin ever since."
Mrs. Wickes fell back exhausted on her pillow.
"Wot for?" she whispered in fierce insistence. "I wanter know wot for?"