The Crime and the Criminal Part 63

Mr. Haines opened his lips.

"That creature has buncoed me again."

"What creature?"

"Private detective Stewart Trevannion."

"When a man calls himself a private detective, nine times out of ten yon may safely write him down a scoundrel. The tenth time, perhaps, he is something worse."

"A scoundrel. That's what he is. And next time we chance to meet I'll write the thing on him in good bold letters in my very plainest hand.

He raised another fifty out of me. He undertook to place me in communication with my girl if I let him have it. He has placed me in communication neither with my girl nor with himself since he raised that fifty."

Mr. Holman leaned against the side of the table on which he had just been having tea. He regarded his visitor with something like a twinkle in his eye.

"Governor, do you mind my speaking a little plainly?"

"I do not."

"Take my tip, book a berth in the next boat, and go back where you came from. You'll be more at home like over there."

"Not till I have looked upon her grave if she is dead, or on her face if she is living."

"Ah, then, I shouldn't be surprised if you were to stay this side some time. You'll settle here."

"Aren't the resources of civilisation sufficient to enable me to find my girl?"

"The resources of civilisation aren't interested. You drove her away, it's for you to fetch her back again. What it strikes me is that she don't want to come, and she don't mean to, either."

"She is dead."

"How are you going to prove it?"

"I want you to help me."

"How am I going to help you any more than I have done? I'm a public servant. I receive instructions from my superiors, and I have to obey them. How am I going to devote myself to you? I don't know what good I should do if I could. Thousands of girls are missing; they leave home because they're sick of it, and they set up on their own hook. How do you think you're going to find 'em if they don't mean to be found? It may be easy in the stories, but it isn't out of them."

Rising from his chair, Mr. Haines paced slowly across the room. Mr.

Holman watched him. He noticed his air of extreme depression.

"You do as I say, take my tip, and go back by the next s.h.i.+p. You'll be able to look for her as well there as over here--yes, and better. You say she knows what address will find you. You'll hear from her safe enough when she's had about enough of it.

"Not me."

"How can you tell that."

"Because she's dead."

Mr. Holman moved from the table with a gesture of impatience. Not impossibly he would have terminated the interview then and there. He looked as if language of even unusual strength was trembling on his lips. He was prevented, however, from giving it utterance by the unannounced entrance of a second visitor.

The visitor was in the shape of a girl--a young girl. She was pretty, with a prettiness which more than suggested the theatre. She had an amazing array of short, fair hair. It shrined her face like a sort of coronal. The big hat was perched on the top of her hair. There was a hint of kohl about her pretty eyes. And though her plump cheeks were clean enough and tempting enough just then, one could have sworn that they had long been familiar with rouge.

She came into the room with a complete absence of ceremony, as if she was perfectly at home.

"Well, uncle, so you're back again."

Mr. Holman looked her up and down without saying a word. Planting herself right in front of him she clasped her hands behind her back--impudently demure. "You can look at me."

"So you have dyed your hair."

"I have."

"And cut it off."

"And cut it off."

"And fluffed it?"

"Fluffed it? Crimped it, I suppose you mean. My dear uncle, if anybody offered to double your salary on condition that you dyed your hair, you'd dye it all the colours of the rainbow." Mr. Holman turned away.

"Aren't you going to kiss me? You'd not only dye, you'd give your hair to kiss me if you weren't my uncle. How nice it is to have relations!"

Mrs. Holman appeared at the door.

"Never mind him, Hetty. He's come back in a bad temper."

"Of course he's come back in a bad temper. Did you ever know him when he hadn't come back in a bad temper? He's the worst-tempered man I ever knew, and that's saying something."

Mr. Holman seated himself in an arm-chair by the fire. The young lady sat on one of the arms. She smoothed her uncle's hair.

"Dear uncle, how well you're looking."

Mr. Holman shook his head, as if to remove it from the reach of her embrace.

"Don't touch me."

"And what a nice, kind look you've got in your eyes."

"Hetty, I'm ashamed of you."

"Oh, no, you're not. You're not half such a goose as you pretend to be."

"I tell you that I am."

"You're what? A goose. Dear uncle, I would never let any one call you a goose except yourself. Won't you kiss me?"

The fair young face stooped down. The man's weather-beaten face looked up. The lips met.

The kiss was interrupted by a series of exclamations which came from the back of the room. So unexpected and so startling a series of exclamations that Mr. Holman rose from his chair with such suddenness as almost to overturn his niece.