Now the Japanese police is the most perfect police force in the world in every respect. They are recruited from the Samurai or fighting-class, and they are gentlemen to a man.
The chief of the Nikko police made profound apologies for disturbing the peace of the strangers, then he heard the story told by M’Gourley.
He agreed that it was strange, but opined that the Lost One might simply be a lost child. Where exactly was she found? In a valley of crimson azaleas on the road from Kureise. Ah, yes! there was such a valley well known, for the azaleas were crimson, and differed from the wild scarlet azaleas so common hereabouts. There were also villages around there, and tea houses; it might possibly be that she belonged to one of these. As to the mad man they had seen running away, no one else had seen him.
Then Campanula was brought in and questioned, the whole of the “Tortoise” people squatting round in a ring, even down to Hedgehog San, who sat with judicial gravity, and seemed to be taking mental notes.
She told her little tale about the house with the plum tree in front of it, and the kite, and the sugar-candy dragon which she had lost and found again. How the said dragon had grown very much, and seemed different, but tasted all right. Here she hastened to explain that she had not eaten him, only touched him with her tongue.
She could not possibly say what men called her father. He hammered things. What sort of things? She did not know, but they went pong, pong, pong, when he struck them.
“Tinsmith,” murmured M’Gourley.
She was sure of one thing, that her father’s house was quite close to the wood and the azalea valley.
How old was she?
Seven times had the cherry blossoms blown since her humble self—