“I don’t know,” said Jimmy, “will he be expecting to stay the night at the hotel, for if he is there’s no place for him to sleep. There’s the doctor’s young lady has the big front room, and yourself and the other three ladies has all the rest of the bedrooms there is in it, and the like of a high-up man such as the Inspector-General will be looking for something better than a sofa in the drawing-room. I don’t know either is Bridgy fit to cook the sort of dinner he’d be accustomed to.”
“I don’t care a straw where he sleeps. What I’m thinking about is the abominable fuss there’ll be when he arrives. One comfort is he won’t be able to find these wretched Members of Parliament any more than I can myself.”
“He might, then,” said Jimmy hopefully.
“He will not; but I tell you what he’ll do. He’ll find out about the doctor being gone and Patsy Devlin. Then he’ll come to the conclusion that there’s some sort of a conspiracy on foot in the country. He’ll draft in a lot of extra police, and he’ll have the life worried out of me. Look here, Jimmy, I can’t stand much more of this sort of thing to-day. You’ll have to keep those women off me somehow. I’ll count on you to do it. I shall go and shut myself up in the telegraph office along with Susy Lizzie, and if you let one of them in on me I’ll never forgive you. Let them fight it out with Sergeant Farrelly when he gets back. Let Cole try them with another stratagem if he likes. All I ask is to have them kept off me.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” said Jimmy; “and if you send Susy Lizzie into the hotel any time, Bridgy’ll give her a cup of tea for you. You’ll be wanting it.”
CHAPTER XXI
At four o’clock Miss Farquharson, Mrs. Dick and Mrs. Sanders went down to the police barrack. They found Miss Blow seated by herself in the men’s day room. Constable Moriarty was digging potatoes in the garden at the back of the house. He had been questioned and cross-questioned by Miss Blow for more than an hour after he had completed the destruction of the bicycle tyre. He felt jaded and nervous. He stood on the brink of a frightful exposure. A trifling accident, an incautious word, might at any moment betray the part he had played in Constable Cole’s stratagem. Some men under the circumstances would have steadied themselves with whisky, but Moriarty was a strict teetotaller. Others would have smoked pipe after pipe of strong tobacco. Moriarty, much wiser, went out and dug potatoes. There is nothing more soothing to racked nerves than digging in the ground, and there is a mild excitement about driving a spade into potato ridges which distracts the mind from painful thoughts and terrifying anticipations. The turning up of the roots of any particular plant may display an amazing wealth of tubers, may expose to the gaze of the delighted gardener some potato of huge size or very unusual shape. You cannot tell beforehand what will be unearthed. Expectations and hope run high. There is also present a certain fear. It is always possible, unless you are very skilful at the work, that a spade may slice a potato, leaving you face to face with two reproachful, earth-soiled, flat surfaces, useless for the pot, a manifest disgrace to your digging. Moriarty was not a highly skilled or very experienced potato digger. He enjoyed to the full the pleasures of anticipation. He suffered from the bitterness which follows mistakes. He almost forgot Miss Blow and the torment of her questioning.
Then, at a quarter past four, Miss Blow’s voice brought him back from his security. She called him by name from the back door of the barrack. Moriarty scraped the clay off the sides of his boots, shuffled on his coat, and gave his hands a rub on the front part of the legs of his trousers. Then he joined Miss Blow and the other ladies in the day room.