“What’s that about murdering?”
“Why, the baker boy just told me that at Mrs. Delfosse’s, down on the Point, three of the boarders, if not more, were murdered in their beds last night. The whole neighbourhood is there, and there is such a crowd you can hardly get by. And that is your beat, too—I should just like to know where you were last night? I’ll be bound packed away in some corner, smoking. You need not shake your head. I know you. Neither use nor ornament. Whatever the Government sees in you to pay you wages I can’t think.”
“Now, do keep quiet, Bell, and let a fellow have a show. You have got hold of some cock-and-bull story that will melt down in the end to a broken window or a drunken man beating his wife, or some such foolery.”
“No such thing! You just dress and pack off to the station. You may be wanted, and how can you get a chance to show your ability if you are out of the way? A clever man like you only a common constable! I say it’s a disgrace. You should speak up, and put yourself forward.”
* * * * *
Two hours later Mr. Hobbs returned.
“You were partly right for a wonder, Bell. One man has been murdered, and a very strange case it is, too.”
And then he told in detail to his wife those events that have been related.
“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Hobbs. “What shall we have next? And you call that a mystery? Why it is as plain as the nose on your face. The woman killed him, of course! Who else could have done it? That fainting or swooning is all moonshine. Why I could faint twenty times a day if I wanted to. I know that Mrs. Booth—knew her before she was married. A barmaid in a sixpenny bar. That will tell you what she is. Why I would not trust the life of a cat to one of those creatures. Faint, indeed! It wants a fool of a man to be taken in by that sort of humbug.”
“That’s just what Detective Dobell says; he’s got the case in hand. Sent for him to Sydney. As though we were all fools here. Just my luck again! He seems to think there is no doubt about it, and that all the trouble will be to hunt up the corroborative evidence against her.”