French half rose, then sank back into his seat.
“Ask him if it’s urgent,” he called after the retreating girl, partly from genuine curiosity, and partly to preserve the fiction that he was master of his own movements in his own house.
“It’s not so urgent as your supper. Just let him wait,” Mrs. French repeated inexorably. “What difference will a minute or two make anyway?”
Her view, it soon appeared, was upheld by the constable himself.
“He says it’s not urgent,” Eliza corroborated, reappearing at the door. “He can wait till you’re ready.”
“Very well. Let him wait,” French repeated, relieved that the incident had ended so satisfactorily, and for another fifteen minutes he continued steadily fortifying the inner man. Then taking out his pipe, he joined his visitor.
“ ’Evening, Caldwell. What’s wrong now?”
Caldwell, a tall, heavy-looking man of middle age, rose clumsily to his feet and saluted.
“It’s that there circular of yours, sir,” he explained. “I’ve found the woman.”
“The deuce you have!” French cried, pausing in the act of filling his pipe and immediately keenly interested. “Who is she?”