“I’m Detective McSweeny, at your service, sur,” he said, bowing stiffly, as the old gentleman blinked at him through his spectacles. “I daresay you’ll have read my experiences? They are published in books, and that’s how some call me the great McSweeny.”
“No, I have not had that pleasure,” politely responded Mr Stafford. “I never heard the name before.”
“Ah, I know how that is,” returned McSweeny, with alacrity. “It’s because a kind of assistant of mine puts his name to the books. Ye see, sur, I’m troubled wid a kind of stiffness in me right hand, and writin’s bothersome to me, so I let him do it. His name’s McGovan, and he gets all the praise and all the money for the books, which I wouldn’t mind at all, at all, if he didn’t try to make me look as small as possible. If ye believe him, I can’t do a dacent job without him. For a story-teller, I’ll back him agin all the world.”
“Yes, I think I have heard his name, but I never look at that kind of literature,” wearily answered Mr Stafford.
“An’, good for you, sur; for the lies that’s in it—especially about me—no wan knows better than meself; but it’s no use me saying anything, for paiple believe every word he writes. He drives his own carriage, while I’ve to walk on futt. Never moind! I’ve the pull on him in cleverness. Give me your difficult job, and see if I don’t run down the thafe better than a dozen McGovans rolled into wan.”
“I understand—you mean that he is but a lame detective?”
“He is that,” said McSweeny, with a twinkle in his eye, as he thought of the kick which had laid me up. “If there’s a lame detective annywhere in the world this minit, it’s him.”
“Then I am delighted to have met you instead,” exclaimed the innocent Mr Stafford, “for of all the mysteries that ever were brought here to unravel, none could be more incomprehensible than the robbery which has brought me here. You can understand how valuables might go where there are hands to take them,—servants or professional thieves,—but for jewels to vanish before one’s eyes in a locked room, with windows fastened, and not a living creature near, seems as nearly impossible as anything I can imagine, yet that is exactly the case which I have brought to you.”
“Nothing at all—nothing at all to us,” said McSweeny, with the most unbounded confidence in himself. “Just go over the whole story, and I’ll soon put it all to rights.”
“Well, I am, as you probably know, a bachelor, and live out at Newington in a self-contained house of my own. My servants are a housekeeper, a kitchen-maid, and good-for-nothing page—a boy of thirteen, who eats his own weight of food every day, and torments the life out of me generally. I must tell you at once, however, that it is quite impossible that any of these three servants can be the thief.”