“Where––”
“It was the kitten did it––that blessed Caliban! And think of it, sir; I’ve always hated cats, ever since I was a kid! Emily says––”
“But how––”
“Maybe if the hall had been lighted––but Mrs. Quinlan’s got that parsimony peculiar to all landladies––and I trod on its tail, and it was all up!”
“Morrow, are you a driveling idiot, or an operative? Are you reporting, or exploding? If you called me up to tell me that you trod on the tail of your landlady’s parsimony, you don’t need a job in a detective bureau; you need a lunacy commission!” Blaine’s voice was vexed, but little smiling lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes.
“I beg your pardon, sir; I am almost crazy, I think––with happiness. I’ve found Mr. Jimmy Brunell and his daughter. They are the two mysterious boarders whom Mrs. Quinlan has been shielding all this time, and 293 I never even suspected it! It was Jimmy Brunell who fired at me that night of the day they disappeared. He didn’t recognize me, and thought I was one of his enemies––one of Paddington’s men, like young Charley Pennold.
“You remember, I told you I found the kitten in the deserted house and brought it home for Mrs. Quinlan to take care of? Well, she never lights the gas until the very last minute, and late this afternoon, about half an hour ago, I was stumbling along the second-floor hallway to my room in the dark, when I stepped on the kitten. It yelled like mad, and Emily heard it from her room above. Forgetting caution and everything else, she opened the door and called it!
“Of course, when I heard her voice, I was upstairs two steps at a time, with the cat under my arm clawing like a vixen. She was perfectly freezing at first––not the cat; it’s a he; I mean Emily. But after I explained that when I’d gotten to care for her I only tried to help her, she––oh, well, I’m going to let her tell you herself, if you’re willing, sir! I’ll bring them both down to you now, if you say so, she and her father. Jimmy Brunell’s more than anxious to see you; he wants to make a clean breast of the whole affair––tell all he knows about the case; and I think what he’s got to say will astonish you and finish the whole thing––crack that nut you were talking to me about this afternoon, provide the link in the chain, the crevice in the crime cube! May I bring them?”
Blaine acquiesced, and after issuing his orders to the subordinates about him, waited in a fever of impatience which he could scarcely control, and which, had he stopped to think of it, would have astonished him beyond 294 measure. That he––who had daily, almost hourly, awaited unmoved the appearance of men famous and infamous, illustrious and obscure, should so agitatedly view the coming of this old offender, was incomprehensible.
Yet although he had really learned little that was conclusive from Guy’s somewhat incoherent account, he felt, in common with his young operative, that the crux of the matter lay here, to his hand, that from the lips of this old ex-convict would fall the magic word which would open to him the inner door of this mystery of mysteries––which would prove, as the golden key of truth, absolute and unassailable.