"To—pick—mushrooms?" she repeated, with a puzzled look. Then she smiled. "Ah, I understand. Yes, when do you intend to pick the fine mushrooms?"
"As soon as I know where they are, and how to get them. If you assist me it will, of course, make matters easy for me."
"To-night?"
"Mademoiselle, you are a thought-reader. You anticipate my wishes. To-night, by all means."
"Then I will see that one of the windows is left unlatched. Mon Dieu! Meet me here at this place at nine o'clock." With this she turned abruptly round the corner they were passing, and disappeared into a shop.
Maxwell-Pitt glanced ahead, and saw Captain and Miss Richards approaching. They might not have seen him with the maid, for they were in earnest conversation. Captain Richards only glanced casually at him in passing.
"Well, this is what I call remarkable—simply re-markable," said Maxwell-Pitt to himself as he walked to his hotel. "How on earth should she know of the V.C. business, and, what is more, that I had to pay my entrance fee by a previous burglary? Who could have told her? I wonder why any member should be so extremely anxious to assist me. . . . Stop! Was it really a member? There's that man Marvell—the detective. He has been present at two former burglaries—called in by accident, certainly, but he has his eye on us, and perhaps he now has some means of finding out in advance the task set to members. The remarkably obliging Adèle may be merely a female detective. She may assist me to get into the house, and show me where the V.C. is, and then, when I get it, her friend Marvell will appear. In that case Richards and his sister are in the know, and this apparently casual meeting just now, and Adèle's annoyance, was pre-arranged to throw me off the scent. It seems to me, Maxwell-Pitt, that you'll have to be very careful what you are about, or you'll be landed to-night, and by a woman."
That evening he kept his appointment at the street-corner. The maid was late. The clocks had chimed the quarter before she came, hot and breathless—not her cool, nonchalant self of the morning.
"It has been so difficult to leave," she explained. "Miss Richards would have me to read to her after the dinner. Walter Scott! And me dying all the time to be here, Mr.—— What shall I call you?"
"Jones," said Maxwell-Pitt, "is a dreamy, romantic name, very suitable for a mushroom picker."