"That's Melchard," he said, pointing. "This bundle of letters I took off him. Amongst them you'll find useful information. Read 'em now, superintendent. You'll find there's a flat in Bayswater, where two or three of his crowd in the illicit drug traffic are expecting him to-morrow morning. That's the important one—the thick mauve paper."
And he drank more tea, while Finucane ran eager eyes over the letter.
"Good God!" he said, rising. "Go on with your tea, Mr. Bellamy—not your story. Back in three minutes."
He pushed an electric button, and almost ran from the room.
"You see, sir," said Dick to Caldegard, "as we were coming home in the train from our little day out, poor Miss Caldegard was so tired that she said I must find her a fairy godmother directly we reached town. So I took her straight to the only lady of that rank whom I know. I dare say you know her too—it's Lady Elizabeth Bruffin. George Bruffin's an old friend of mine—Mexico—and his wife's a connoisseur in pumpkins and rat-traps."
Since all London that season was talking of the two Bruffins, and every newspaper, in direct ratio to the badness of its paper and print, was scavenging for paragraphs, true or false, concerning the "palatial home" in Park Lane, neither Caldegard nor Randal Bellamy could conceal round-eyed astonishment.
"But Amaryllis? Did she look—well, anything like——"
"Like me?" asked Dick, grinning all over the better side of his twisted face. "Well, sir, she hasn't been knocked about, you know. But her rig did her certainly less justice than mine does me. Nothing on earth could make her look like a tough, and the sun-bonnet certainly had an——"
But Finucane was with them again.
"Excuse me behaving like Harlequin in the pantomime, gentlemen," he said. "Now, Mr. Bellamy."