Garth, aware of her displeasure, scarcely dared suggest an answer to his curiosity, but the inspector, in a happier mood, did not hesitate.
"Maybe, Nora, you'll tell us how you got in that dive as a first class housemaid."
"There was only one way I could think of," she answered. "The place was bound to make cases for Bellevue, so I went to the head nurse and took her into my confidence. She kept me posted. At every chance I went there and was apparently ill myself of the same dreadful illness as the patient in the next cot. About two weeks ago the head nurse telephoned me a case had come in which looked promising. I've been there since. I'll confess, the best I hoped for was the number of the house, but this girl grew confidential finally. She had actually worked there. When she found she couldn't go back for a long time, and learned that I was about to be discharged as cured, she whispered a telephone number and a name. She said they would want somebody and it was hard to get just the right kind. I called up last night and told them about her and my anxiety for the place. A meeting was arranged with Smith in a café. He wouldn't give me the address, but he agreed to take me there this afternoon. You see he wouldn't have let me out again until he was sure of me—no afternoons off there."
"Clever, Nora," the inspector muttered.
She shook her head.
"Only choosing the best chance. I knew I couldn't trace them in any obvious fashion. They were too careful. Few customers had the run of the place. The stuff was taken to the rest. The way they had Black followed last night to make sure he left no trail shows how they accounted for everything. He had evidently been seen answering to that generous symptom of his before."
Garth noticed that she did not speak to him directly, but her resentment could not completely veil her relief at his safety, her appreciation of the courage that had urged him to her rescue, her gratitude that his daring had brought about the end she had so ardently desired. He hoped, moreover, that there was, about her quiet manner, something to be followed to that necessary but impulsive moment in the brown radiance of the evil house.
Yet that illusion she did not permit him to hold for long. He left the inspector and her at the flat with an uncomfortable feeling of having failed to measure up to the idea of him she had developed. She did not mention Black again, but her restraint persisted. Sooner or later, he tried to tell himself, something would destroy that—probably another case that would throw them together, that would make them depend one upon the other.
At headquarters one day the doorman told him that the inspector had been taken ill. The detective satisfied himself that nothing serious was to be feared, so he smiled, thinking the situation might offer something useful for himself.
It was really the trivial fact of the inspector's cold that involved Nora and Garth in the troubles of Addington Alsop. Those gathered into one of the most daring and dangerous cases headquarters had had since the commencement of the period of reconstruction.