"Well," he said. "If that's all you knows, I'll be getting along. Good afternoon, mum. Sorry to 'ave troubled you."
Mrs. Grant gave a grunt, and looked anything but pleasant. She followed her visitors to the door with the sourest of faces. But on the doorstep her demeanor changed with startling suddenness. She became positively effusive, making one or two little jokes at which the sergeant, puzzled, but relieved at her change of attitude, roared appreciatively. Finally she insisted on shaking hands with both officers, and as they tramped off down the street she stood at her door, waving her hand at their unconscious backs. Having thus appeased the curiosity and disappointed the hopes of all the dear friends and neighbors who had been waiting in ghoulish joy to find out the nature of the police visit to her house, she returned to her son, who, very pleased with himself, was smiling at his reflection in the mirror.
"An' now," she said briskly, "what's all this about, eh? What's all this talk about books, an' spies, an' Mr. Bloomin' Conky o' Lambeth, eh?"
"You 'eard what I told 'im," said Bill.
"Yes, an' I knows enough about you, Bill Grant, to tell when you're lyin'. I didn't meet yer this week for the first time. Now let's 'ave the truth. What d'you mean by bringin' the police into a respectable 'ouse, eh?"
Bill looked round him in hunted fashion. Then, obeying his lifelong instinct that in dealing with his mother, discretion was the better part of valor, he picked up his cap and backed to the door. He mumbled something about—"Step out an' 'ave a look round"—and was gone.
His mother glared furiously at the door. If only she had thought to lock it when the policemen went! But she wasted no time in useless regrets. When Bill came back to supper she'd get it all out of him. Meanwhile it might be as well to go out and explain to one or two neighbors how her two cousins in the police force had been to see her. She put on her bonnet and went.
Bill, skulking at the corner of the street, waited till she was out of sight. Then, slipping into the house, he collected his kit and his rifle, and went to a Y.M.C.A. at Victoria, and there he spent the night. Mrs. Grant did not see her son again before he departed for the front; she was thus free to invent her own reasons for his visit from the police. But she never connected Bill with the statement which appeared subsequently in the less dignified newspapers.
"The Denmore Manor Mystery still continues to baffle the most acute intellects of the police force. It is, however, certain, from evidence of the most unimpeachable nature, that the whole affair is a plot of German intrigue and the Hidden Hand. When will the Government ...? Etc., etc."
Bill, on the steamer crossing from England to France, read this passage aloud to Alf, to whom he had already recounted the story of "Conky."