“Exactly,” said Thaddeus, “and here he comes,” he added, as a carriage was driven up to the door and one of the citizen police descended therefrom.
“You would better leave us to talk over this matter together,” said Thaddeus, as he hastened to the door. “We shall be able to manage it entirely, and the details might make you nervous.”
“I couldn’t be more nervous than I am,” said Bessie; “but I’ll leave you just the same.”
Whereupon she went to her room, and Thaddeus, for an hour, was closeted with the detective, to which he detailed the whole story.
“It’s one of the two,” said the latter, when Thaddeus had finished, “and I agree with you it is more likely to be the cook than the waitress. If it was the waitress, she couldn’t have stood your examination as well as you say she did. Perhaps I’d better see her, though, and talk to her myself.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said Thaddeus “we’ll pass you off as a business acquaintance of mine up from town, and you can stay all night and watch developments.”
So it was arranged. The detective was introduced into the family as a correspondent of Thaddeus’s firm, and he settled down to watch the household. Afternoon and evening went by without developments, and at about eleven o’clock every light in the house was extinguished, and the whole family, from the head of the house to the cook, had apparently retired.
At half-past eleven, however, there were decided signs of life within the walls of Thaddeus’s home. The clew was working satisfactorily, and the complete revelation of the mystery was close at hand.
The remainder of the narrative can best be told in the words of the detective:
“When Mr. Perkins sent for me,” he said, “and told me all that had happened, I made up my mind that he had a servant in his house for whom the police had been on the lookout for some time. I thought she was a certain Helen Malony, alias Bridget O’Shaughnessy, alias many other names, who was nothing more nor less than the agent of a clever band of thieves who had lifted thousands of dollars of swag in the line of household silver, valuable books, diamonds, and other things from private houses, where she had been employed in various capacities. I could not understand why she should have made ’way with the dishes and Mrs. Perkins’s table-cloth, but there’s no accounting for tastes of people in that line of business, so I didn’t bother much trying to reason that matter out.