Miss Gladys Baker was easily located. She lived with her widowed mother, in one of the back streets of Fritton.
When the Inspector arrived at the house, she, and her mother and brother, were sitting down to supper, in company with Mrs. Baker's lodger, an earnest young man who worked in Jones's store. Mrs. Baker opened the door to the Inspector, which was perhaps unfortunate, since she was a lady of extremely delicate sensibility, and the information that he wanted to see her son at once brought on her palpitations. However, when she had been supported into the kitchen, and left there in the care of her daughter and the lodger, Percy Baker took the Inspector into the front room, a neat apartment, smelling strongly of must, and decorated with red plush, aspidistras, and pampas grass, and asked him belligerently what he wanted.
He was a good-looking young man, but rather spoiled by the pugnacious expression he habitually wore; and it soon became apparent to the Inspector that in his different way he was quite as dramatically inclined as Ermyntrude Carter. When asked what he had been doing that afternoon, he countered by demanding what his movements had got to do with the police; and when told never to mind about that, he plunged into a dark, and somewhat involved diatribe against the police, whom he called minions of the bourgeoisie. Finally, the Inspector managed to elicit from him the admission that he had been out on his motor bicycle.
"Out on your motor-bike, were you? Take anyone with you?"
Baker looked suspiciously at him. "What are you getting at?"
"You answer my question, and never mind what I'm getting at. Come on, now! Took your young lady, I dare say, pillion-riding?"
Baker sneered horribly at him. "I've got no time for young ladies. Think I'd get married, with the world the way it is? Marriage is for the rich, and a man who-'
"All right, I don't want to hear about that. Had you got anyone with you, or hadn't you?"
"No," said Baker sulkily.
"Where did you go?"