"And never a cross word between you all these years----"
" 'Yer daft cow,' 'e says, 'can't yer see yer spoilin' everythink?' 'Never you mind wot I'm spoiling,' I says, 'even if it is some scarlet 'ussy yer livin' with in that 'ouse, you gigolo,' I says, 'leaving me wivout a word after all I done for you,' I says; and 'e says to me, ' 'Ere's some money, if that's wot yer after, an' you can 'ave some more any time you want it, so now will you be quiet an' get out of 'ere or else you'll lose me me job, that's wot you'll do, if anybody sees you 'ere,' 'e says, an' 'e shoves some money into me 'and an' slams the door again, so I come straight round 'ere to see you, sir."
"What for?" asked the Saint feebly.
He felt that he was only inviting a fresh cataract of unpunctuated confidences, but he could think of no other question that seemed so entirely apt.
Mrs. Ellshaw, however, did not launch out into another long-distance paragraph. She thrust one of her beefy paws into the fleshy canyon that ran down from her breastbone into the kindly concealment of her clothing, and dragged out what looked at first like a crumpled roll of white paper.
"That's wot for," she said, thrusting the catch towards him.
Simon took it and flattened it out. It was three new five-pound notes clumsily crushed together; and for the first time in that interview he was genuinely interested.
"Is that what he gave you?"
"That's wot he gave me, exactly as 'e put it in me 'and, an' there's somethink dirty about it, you mark my words."
"What sort of job was your husband in before he-er- left you?" Simon inquired.
" 'E never 'ad no regular job," said Mrs. Ellshaw candidly. "Sometimes 'e made a book-you know, sir, that street betting wot's supposed to be illegal. Sometimes 'e used to go to race meetings, but I don't know wot 'e did there, but I know 'e never 'ad fifteen pounds in 'is life that 'e came by honestly, that I know, and I wouldn't let 'im be dishonest, it ain't worth it, with so many coppers about, and 'im a married man wiv six children"
"What's the address where you saw him?"
"It's in Duchess Place, sir, wot's more like a mews, and the 'ouse is number six, sir, that's wot it is, it's next door to two young gennelmen as I do for, such nice gennelmen they are too, always askin' about me legs------"
The Saint stood up. He was interested, but he had no intention of resuming a study of Mrs. Ellshaw's varicose veins.
"I don't know whether I can do anything for you, but I'll see what I can find out-you might like to let me change these fivers for you," he added. "Pound notes will be easier for you to manage, and these may help me."
He put the three banknotes away in a drawer, and saw the last of Mrs. Ellshaw with some relief. Her troubles were not so utterly commonplace as he had expected them to turn out when she started talking, and some of the brightest episodes in his career had had the most unpromising beginnings, but there was nothing in the recital he had just listened to which struck him as giving it any special urgency. Even when the whole story was an open book to him, the Saint could not feel that he was to blame for failing to foresee the consequences of Mrs. Ellshaw's visit.
He was occupied at that time with quite a different proposition-the Saint was nearly always occupied with something or other, for his ideas of good living were put together on a shamelessly plutocratic scale, and all his expenses were paid out of the proceeds of his raids on those whom he knew as the Ungodly. In this case it was a man of no permanent importance who claimed to be the owner of a mining concession in Brazil. There were always one or two men of that kind on the Saint's visiting list-they were the providential pot-boilers of his profession, and he would have considered it a crime to let them pass by, but only a very limited number of them have been found worthy of commemoration in these chronicles. He walked home from the conclusion of this casual episode at two o'clock in the morning, and might have died before dawn if Sam Outrell had been less conscientious.
"The men have been to fix your extension telephone," was the message passed on to him by the night porter; and the Saint, who had not ordered an extension telephone at all, was silently thoughtful in the elevator that whisked him up to his floor.
He walked down the corridor, as soundless as a prowling cat on the thick carpet, past the entrance of his own suite to another door at the very end of the passage. There was a key on his chain to unlock it; and he stepped out on to the fire-escape and lighted a cigarette under the stars.
From the handrail of the grating where he stood, it was an easy swing to his bathroom window, which was open. He passed across the sill like a shadow and went from room to room with a gun in his hand, searching the darkness with supersensitive faculties for anything that might be waiting to catch him unawares. Everything was quiet; but he touched pieces of furniture, and knew that they had been moved. The drawers of his desk were open, and his foot rustled against a sheaf of papers carelessly thrown down on the floor. Without touching a light switch he knew that the place had been effectively ransacked; but he came to the hall without finding a trace of any more actively unfriendly welcome.
It was not until he switched on the hall light that he saw what his fate ought to have been.
There was a cheap fibre attache-case standing close to the entrance-if he had moved another step to one side he would have kicked it. Two thin insulated wires ran from it to the door and terminated in a pair of bright metal contacts like a burglar alarm, one of them screwed to the frame and the other to the door itself. If he had entered in the normal way, they would have completed the circuit directly the door began to open; and he had no doubt what the sequel would have been.
An ingenious mixture of an electrical detonator, a couple of pounds of gelignite, and an assortment of old scrap-iron, was indicated inside that shabby case; but the Saint did not attempt to make certain of it, because it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that some eccentric entrance as he had made could have been foreseen, and a second detonator provided to act on anyone who opened the valise to investigate it. He disconnected the wires, and drove out to Hammersmith Bridge with the souvenir, very cautiously, as soon as he could fetch his car from the garage, and lowered his potential decease on a string to the bottom of the Thames.
So far as he could tell, only the three five-pound notes which he had put away in his desk had been taken. It was this fact which made him realise that the search of his rooms had not been a merely mechanical preliminary to the planting of a booby-trap by one of the many persons who had reason to desire his funeral. But it was not until the next morning that he realised how very important the disappearance of Mr. Ellshaw must be, when he learned how Mrs. Ellshaw had left her troublesome veins behind her for all time.
II THE body was taken out of the Thames just below London Bridge by the river police. There were no marks of violence beyond a slight bruise on the forehead which might have been caused by contact with the piers of one of the upper bridges. Death was due to drowning.
"It's as obvious as any suicide can be," said Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal. "Apparently the woman's husband left her about a year ago, and she had to work like a slave to keep the children. Her neighbours say she was very excited the night before, talking incoherently about having seen her husband and him having refused to recognise her. If that was true, it provides a motive; if it wasn't, it covers 'unsound mind.' "