“Before I went to Frizinghall,” said the Sergeant, cutting him short, “I told you to keep your eyes on Rosanna Spearman, without allowing her to discover that she was being watched. Do you mean to tell me that you have let her give you the slip?”
“I am afraid, sir,” says Joyce, beginning to tremble, “that I was perhaps a little too careful not to let her discover me. There are such a many passages in the lower parts of this house——”
“How long is it since you missed her?”
“Nigh on an hour since, sir.”
“You can go back to your regular business at Frizinghall,” said the Sergeant, speaking just as composedly as ever, in his usual quiet and dreary way. “I don’t think your talents are at all in our line, Mr. Joyce. Your present form of employment is a trifle beyond you. Good morning.”
The man slunk off. I find it very difficult to describe how I was affected by the discovery that Rosanna Spearman was missing. I seemed to be in fifty different minds about it, all at the same time. In that state, I stood staring at Sergeant Cuff—and my powers of language quite failed me.
“No, Mr. Betteredge,” said the Sergeant, as if he had discovered the uppermost thought in me, and was picking it out to be answered, before all the rest. “Your young friend, Rosanna, won’t slip through my fingers so easy as you think. As long as I know where Miss Verinder is, I have the means at my disposal of tracing Miss Verinder’s accomplice. I prevented them from communicating last night. Very good. They will get together at Frizinghall, instead of getting together here. The present inquiry must be simply shifted (rather sooner than I had anticipated) from this house, to the house at which Miss Verinder is visiting. In the meantime, I’m afraid I must trouble you to call the servants together again.”
I went round with him to the servants’ hall. It is very disgraceful, but it is not the less true, that I had another attack of the detective-fever, when he said those last words. I forgot that I hated Sergeant Cuff. I seized him confidentially by the arm. I said, “For goodness’ sake, tell us what you are going to do with the servants now?”
The great Cuff stood stock-still, and addressed himself in a kind of melancholy rapture to the empty air.
“If this man,” said the Sergeant (apparently meaning me), “only understood the growing of roses he would be the most completely perfect character on the face of creation!” After that strong expression of feeling, he sighed, and put his arm through mine. “This is how it stands,” he said, dropping down again to business. “Rosanna has done one of two things. She has either gone direct to Frizinghall (before I can get there), or she has gone first to visit her hiding-place at the Shivering Sand. The first thing to find out is, which of the servants saw the last of her before she left the house.”