“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” the detective began; “won’t you sit down now?” And he pulled out a chair she had piled with some others in a corner, and offered it to her.
“I suppose I may as well,” admitted the young woman; “though it does seem a pity not to do a bit of exercising now I’ve cleared the room. You see, I dance in ‘The Jodeling Girl,’ and one has to keep one’s limbs supple, or, if you aren’t up to the mark one night, they put on somebody else. Fact is,” she added confidentially, “that’s why they took me on. Dixie Topping, who used to be one of the four of us that do the dance I’m in, let herself get stiff, and one night when it came to kicking William Tell’s apple off the boy’s head, she missed it clean, and, as it’s got to be done in time with the music, that put the conductor out, so when she had another try, and missed it again, he got so mad that they sacked her and put me on. Ill wind that blows no one any good,” said Miss Seraphina philosophically.
Her belongings were strewn about the room: a great bouquet of carnations lay on a chair, gloves and scarf were thrown on the bookshelf, while an enormous hat covered with flowers and ribbons was poised on a cabinet. She had drawn a curtain across the window, no doubt out of consideration for her complexion, as Gimblet happened to have chosen for this room hangings of a becoming rose colour; and the air was filled with the reek of inexpensive scent. The detective compared it mentally, and extremely unfavourably, with the Arome de la Corse. Altogether he would not have recognised his own room, to such an extent had ten minutes of Miss Seraphina Finner’s occupation removed all former traces of his own individuality. He actually started as he suddenly noticed, perched on the mantelpiece, a pair of small white animals: a smooth-haired cat with eyes of a greenish yellow, and a dog no bigger, but with a long, silky coat. It appeared to be one of the tribe known to the unappreciative as Fidos, and to the admiring owners as Toy Poms. It stood at one end of the shelf, fidgeting and whining, but not daring to jump. The cat had retired to the extreme opposite corner, where it sat with its paws very close together and its tail curled tightly round them, surveying the restless behaviour of the dog with a look of sleepy disdain. The feelings with which Gimblet saw these two, but more especially the dog, sharing this point of vantage with his best blue and white china may be imagined. He was speechless; and perhaps it was just as well.
“I hope you don’t mind Nigger and Pompom,” said Miss Finner, as she accepted a cup of tea, “lots of lumps, please, and heaps of cream too. Seraphina’s pets are her inseparable companions! Don’t they look sweet up there? I put them there to be out of the way while I was on my light fantastic. It bothers me never to know when my foot will come down on one of them, instead of the floor. Pompom seems to enjoy being trampled on by the way he’s always in the middle of the room.” She seized the woolly dog by the scruff of the neck and deposited it in her lap. “Was you frightened of falling on your heady peady, darling,” she murmured, fondling it ecstatically. “No, no, you mustn’t lick your auntie’s face; might give you a pain in your little inside. Isn’t she a sweet little affectionate thing?” she asked, raising her eyes for a moment to Gimblet’s. “Yes,” she went on, as the little dog danced on her knee in a frantic effort to make clear his need to share the cake she had taken, “Pompom shall have a cake too. His auntie wouldn’t let her darling go hungry, no, she wouldn’t! And Nigger shall have some cream for a nice treat.”
She poured some cream into a saucer and placed it on the floor at her feet. The cat, which had watched the attentions showered on Pompom with the cold eye of indifference, now abandoned its pose of superiority, and jumping lightly to the ground approached the saucer on noiseless, unhurried tiptoes. It began to lap the cream with a genteel, condescending air, and with due regard for its whiskers, shaking its head sharply if a drop adhered to one of their long, stiff hairs.
Miss Finner contemplated the sight with admiring delight.
“Doesn’t it do your heart good to see how he likes it?” she asked, “and aren’t his manners lovely? Oh, Pompom, what an example he is to you, darling!” she exclaimed, as Pompom snatched at a piece of cake and swallowed it with one gulp. “Try and behave like your brother does, my angel. He’s always the same,” she went on, “I don’t care where you put him, Nigger is always the perfect gentleman. Why! I took them across to Paris at Easter. Didn’t know what a trouble I should have smuggling Pompom home again, or I should have left her behind in London. I tied feathers all over her, though, and put her in a bonnet box, so they took her for a hat, the darling. As if any hat was half as beautiful! But, as I was saying, we had a beast of a crossing. Oh my! that channel! And poor Pompom was one of the first to feel it. And much as I love her, I must say, she just gave way, and never made the tiniest little effort to hide her feelings. But Nigger! If you’ll believe me, that cat was so ashamed of the way he felt he was going to behave that the tears streamed down his face, and he just mewed and mewed till I could have cried; only being so sick myself I really didn’t care, as a matter of fact. But though he felt so bad he didn’t forget his manners and he wouldn’t be sick, he simply wouldn’t, till I gave him a basin. Then certainly. Oh Lord!” Miss Finner stopped. The recollection was too much even for her; she was also slightly out of breath.
Gimblet listened to her with amusement. Though he wondered vaguely what her business with him could be, he let her run on, supposing that she would disclose it in time. After a moment she resumed in serious tones:
“It’s a good thing, don’t you think, to have a fad of some kind? It’s so hard to get noticed, isn’t it? Expect you found that when you started looking for thieves? People won’t see that one’s any different to anyone else, do what you like. But manage to have something really out of the common about you, and you get your chance. That’s what I think. They forget me all right, but they remember my white cat and dog, and after a little they begin to notice me too. I had a pretty hard time at first, I tell you,” Miss Finner sighed. “But I’m getting on well now, thanks,” she continued, with a return of her former vivacity. “Of course I haven’t got a speaking part yet, but I’m doing a dance, and that’s something at the Inanity. Some one sent me a diamond brooch last week,” she added with pride, pointing to an ugly little diamond star. “What do you think of it? You’re a judge of stones, I should think, being always in the society of burglars, as one may say.”
Gimblet examined and admired. “I’m afraid, though, I’m not really a judge,” he said.