Cynthia Begins to Smile
It is a maxim in warfare that he who scorns to use the enemy’s weapons
will find himself defeated; unfairly, no doubt, but defeated. In her
combat with guile Cynthia had no intention of being defeated. She had
therefore delivered to Dora not the whole of Laura’s message but only
that part which concerned the packing of the trunk. For the rest,
Cynthia remarked airily, she was going up to London the next day
herself and could therefore take the trunk with her.
By this simple expedient Cynthia was able to ensure not only Laura’s
absence while she put Mr. Priestley out of his misery, but also the
further meeting for the afternoon. Cynthia knew perfectly well what
she was going to do at this second interview; she was going to talk to
Mr. Priestley, and then she was going to smile at him—and, if
necessary, go on smiling till dusk.
Had Cynthia but known it, there was reason for an added millimetre or
two to her smile. It would have amused her a good deal to know that,
while the two chief conspirators were chuckling over their
crack-brained preparations for the confounding of Reginald Foster,
Esq., an almost equally clever mind was hard at work trying to extract
the foundation from the whole erection and topple it down upon the
heads of its own authors.
To take another maxim from _The Child’s Guide to Warfare_, it is a
fatal mistake to underestimate one’s opponent. Guy and Mr. Doyle had
not the faintest suspicion that they had not hoodwinked the friendly
Chief Constable just as successfully as that fatherly terror of
village murderers, Inspector Cottingham. Having ascertained that Mr.
Foster had spent Saturday evening at home and had therefore no _alibi_
beyond the word of his wife, they had proceeded to plant his
note-paper and carve George’s boots with the utmost enjoyment and
confidence. For, as to careful attention to detail, had they not
previously muffled their faces in the best shilling-shocker manner and
actually distributed real gent’s blood about the place, with the most
gratifying results? What could any Chief Constable want more?
After a thoroughly satisfactory day, therefore, the two families
prepared to spend Sunday evening in their own respective houses.
George would have strolled across to Dell Cottage, had he not thought
that he did not wish to see very much more of Cynthia that day; for,
attempting to join the other two in the drawing-room after dinner, he
was promptly ejected. “For,” as Mr. Doyle pointed out with some
feeling, “much though I like and esteem you, George, there are times
when I like and esteem you better at a distance, and this is one of
them. Go out into the garden, George, and hang yourself on a bush;
that’s the proper place for gooseberries.”
“You needn’t stay, really, George,” Dora added earnestly. “I’ve quite
grown-up now, you know. And if the man’s intentions become _too_
dishonourable, I can always scream for you, can’t I?”
George fled, growling. George was one of those absurdly out-of-date
people who prefer their women-kind to leave unsaid those things that
ought not to be said. George _was_ ridiculous.
It was fortunate that George took his leisure while he might. Apart
from the bother of an awkward journey to a place called Manstead the
next morning to retrieve his car in time to drive Dora and Mr. Doyle
up to London in it for the opening of the new Jollity revue (the
railway station would certainly be watched, George had had it
carefully impressed upon him), there was yet another blow coming. It
came at about half-past nine.
There was a ring at the front door, and, unlike Mr. Priestley, George
started guiltily. George was really not enjoying life very much in
these days. Knowing his sister, he heaved himself reluctantly out of
his chair and went to answer the ring.
“Hullo, George,” said Guy’s voice. “Here’s a couple of visitors to see
you, Monica and Alan. Cynthia has turned us out of the house. Can you
entertain us?”
“Oh, yes,” said the unhappy George. “Oh, rather.”
“Hullo, George,” said Monica brightly.
“Hullo,” said George with a ghastly smile. “Er—hullo, Alan.”
“Hullo,” said Alan, a somewhat stout young man of fourteen.
The conversation then lapsed.
“Do you entertain us here, George?” Monica asked with interest. “If
so, bring the piano out, too, and we’ll make an evening of it.”
“Oh, sorry,” George mumbled, and stood aside to let these most
unwelcome visitors enter. He closed the front door softly upon all
hope and led the way to the drawing-room.
The visitors stood upon the threshold of the drawing-room and looked
inside with interest. George was improving as an entertainer, they
felt. Even George forgot his sorrow for the moment too. For it
appeared that Dora and her fiancé had not heard the door-bell. Indeed,
unless they were trying to show off, it was quite evident that they
had not.
It seemed a pity to spoil such an idyllic scene, but Alan Spence did
so. He spoilt it with a guffaw. Alan’s guffaw might have been
guaranteed to spoil any idyllic scene. It was not a taking guffaw.
“Oh-oh-ah-hoo!” guffawed Alan.
Dora leapt off that portion of Mr. Doyle on which she was reclining as
if she had suddenly discovered that it was not her fiancé at all, but
a very large hornet. “George, you ass!” she cried, going so red that
it seemed as if she must set fire to her frock.
“George, you goop!” exclaimed Mr. Doyle, no less fiery.
“George, you old idiot!” cackled Guy.
“George, you scream!” shrieked Monica, quite untruthfully.
Alan contented himself with merely guffawing at George.
George sighed. Whatever happened, everybody seemed to blame him.
Whatever he did was always wrong. Life was a bleak business. Then he
looked at Dora and life did not seem quite so bleak after all. He had
never seen either of his sisters embarrassed before. It was a sight
which interested George a good deal.
“Sorry if we were tactless, Dawks,” said Guy, “but it really wasn’t
our fault, you know.”
“Of course it wasn’t. It was George’s. It always is.”
“May we come in now, or would you rather we didn’t?”
“Guy,” said Dora with feeling, “if you say another single word on that
subject, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“May my tongue be cut out,” said Guy, and introduced the new-comers.
While George carefully avoided every one’s eye, they sorted themselves
into seats.
“We were to have come on Tuesday,” Monica announced, “but when we saw
_The Sunday Courier_ this morning, of course we couldn’t wait till
then. We just flew for the first train we could get.”
“What rot, Monica,” observed her brother, with proper scorn for this
feminine hyperbole. “We could have got here hours ago,” he informed
the company, “if she hadn’t wasted half the day packing a lot of
rotten clothes.”
“So now tell us all about it,” Monica continued serenely. “Cynthia
wouldn’t say a single word; can’t imagine why. She said if we wanted
to talk about it, we’d got to come over here, because two more words
on it to-day would send her raving mad.”
“Cinders always was a bit comic,” agreed Alan with brotherly candour.
Guy crossed his legs and slid down in his chair. “Go on, Doyle,” he
said. “You’re the official historian.”
“The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” inquired Doyle
cautiously.
“Heaven forbid!” said Guy, and winked gently.
“I say,” remarked Alan more respectfully, “are you that chap Doyle,
who wrote about it in the _Sunday Courier_?”
“I am that chap Doyle,” agreed Mr. Doyle with grave dignity.
He proceeded to retail a second version of his report to _The
Courier_, adding the chief points of the one he had already telephoned
through for the next morning’s issue.
While he talked George found himself at liberty to study Monica
without fear of being observed. Hitherto he had consciously avoided
looking at her; now that he did so he could hardly believe that this
was the same person, who, little more than two years ago, had caused
him to dance before the wedding-guests. She looked completely
different. The thick plaits which had been the cause of all the
merriment had disappeared and her hair, fair like her sister’s, was
cut short about her small head. George was not an admirer of cropped
heads on women’s shoulders, but even he could not but admit that
Monica’s really didn’t look half bad, considering.
Her features and figure seemed to have altered as much as her hair.
The lean, disjointed look of sixteen had given place to nineteen’s
curves of incipient womanhood; the curves were not pronounced but they
were curves. George liked curves. Her face was curiously like
Cynthia’s and curiously unlike. She had her sister’s wide forehead and
straight nose, and the corners of her lips were touched with the same
sense of humour, but there was an elfin look about her that was quite
different from Cynthia’s air of rather amused repose. Looking more
closely still, George could see that, after all, this was the person
who had brought him low with a hose-pipe, but her methods, he felt,
had probably developed with her curves. She would use subtler means
now, but she would no doubt attain the same results. George shivered
slightly.
“Footprints!” Alan’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Oo!”?
“Did the girl leave footprints, too?” Monica asked eagerly, with her
sex’s immediate conversion of the general into the personal. Just over
two years ago she would also have said only: “Footprints! Oo!”
Guy and Mr. Doyle exchanged glances. The glances said quite plainly:
“I think we shall be able to find use for this young man.”
The talk proceeded.
In due course George rose, went out of the room, returned with drinks
and dispensed them. Still the talk went on. At last Guy suggested that
it was time to make a move. George did not contradict him. George was
a courteous host, but there are limits. Hose-pipes are one, frogs
another.
“What are you doing to-morrow, George?” Guy asked as he rose.
“Got to go over to Manstead to fetch the car,” said George, not quite
so dolefully. There had been a ring in Guy’s question, and George was
not sorry to have a sound excuse against whatever the ring might
portend. “It’s between thirty and forty miles from here. Take me most
of the morning.”
“Oh, are you going to drive forty miles to-morrow morning?” asked
Monica instantly. “Oh, George, how gorgeous! You’ll take me with you,
won’t you?”
“Um!” gulped George. “Er—yes, oh, yes. Er—rather. If—if you’re sure
you’d really like to come. It’ll be a beastly journey, you know,” he
added hopefully.
“Thanks awfully,” said Monica, promptly extinguishing the hope. “I’d
love it.”
George contemplated his feet with a moody air. He had, he now
realised, been quite mistaken about that trip to Manstead; he hadn’t
disliked the thought of it at all, he had actually been looking
forward to it intensely. It had promised a whole morning’s peace, away
from everything that was making life so bleak at present. Now life was
apparently to be bleaker still. Probably Monica would fill the
petrol-tank up with water and the radiator with petrol, or stick pins
into the tyres, or scratch her initials on the paint; at the very
least she would wilfully misdirect him on the road, in order to get a
sixty-mile joy-ride instead of a thirty-five. He meditated dismally.
Doyle had drawn Guy aside. “What about that youth for the opening of
the Inspector’s eyes?” he said in a low voice.
“Just what I’d thought of, my dear fellow. Couldn’t be better. Come
over as soon as you like after breakfast.”
“Do these two know about keeping Dora dark, so to speak?”
“By Jove, no! I’d forgotten all about it. As we’re keeping them in the
dark ourselves, what reason can we give?”
“Leave it to me,” adjured Mr. Doyle, thinking rapidly. He took Guy’s
arm and drew him back to the little group by the door.
“By the way, Nesbitt,” said Mr. Doyle loudly, “I wish you’d do me a
favour. Please don’t tell anybody about Dora being here this week-end.
She particularly doesn’t want her name mentioned in connection with
this affair, as it would be so bad for her at the theatre. The
management are very much down on any of the girls getting mixed up in
murder mysteries; they think it’s bad for business. If it leaked out,
Dora would probably get the sack.”
“Of course, my dear chap,” said Guy gravely. “I quite understand.
Nobody else knows?”
“So far, no. Not even the police. Particularly not the police, I
should say. And we’re going to smuggle her up to London to-morrow in
time for the show. Thanks so much, Nesbitt, thanks so much.”
Alan was staring at Dora with round eyes. “I say,” he said, in tones
to match them, “you’re not on the stage, are you?”
“I am,” Dora smiled, “yes.”
“Coo! What are you in?”
“Well, as there’s no Shakespeare season on at the moment, I’ve been
keeping my hand in up to a few weeks ago in ‘Thumbs Up!’ at the
Jollity.”
“And legs, dearest,” murmured Mr. Doyle _sotto voce_. “Be honest.”
“I say, were you really? I saw that last hols. Topping show!” Mr.
Spence continued to stare with round eyes. His manner had changed
considerably. In place of his former air of confident and slightly
contemptuous assurance he now wore one of respect verging almost upon
diffidence.
George looked at his sister with envy. There would clearly be no frogs
in her bed.
“What part did you play?” asked Monica, who seemed to be sharing
something of her brother’s feelings. She spoke humbly, as a disciple
addressing his master or a mate his plumber.
Dora laughed. “Well, not the lead exactly. I’m in the chorus.”
“Coo!” observed Alan. “Are you a chorus-girl?”
“I suppose I must be,” Dora admitted. “Am I?” she appealed to her
fiancé.
“Certainly you are. That’s why I’m marrying you. Clever men in the
best novels are always infatuated by chorus-girls.”
“Don’t you _love_ wearing all those beautiful costumes?” said Monica
soulfully.
“Dora has a very good opinion of her figure, yes,” remarked Mr. Doyle.
“So have I, dear,” he added hastily, catching a glint in his lady’s
eye. “And I think it’s very sporting of you to have joined the——”
“That’ll do, Pat. That’s quite enough from you.”
Alan turned to George as one man of the world to another. “I say, you
were pulling my leg, weren’t you? She’s not really your sister?” Old
ideas die hard in the young.
The resulting hilarity took them out into the hall.
“Well, good-night, George,” said Guy, stepping out into the night.
“Good-night,” said George.
“Good-night, George,” said Monica. “Till to-morrow.”
“Till to-morrow,” echoed George dully, and walked back to the
drawing-room where he had left the whisky decanter. The drawing-room
door was locked.
“——” said George with emphasis, and went to bed.
Outside in the laurel bushes a dapper figure drew his thick overcoat
about him and shivered in the cold night air. “Well, I’ll be hanged if
I can make out who’s in it!” muttered the dapper figure, and also went
home to bed.
And that, so far as we are concerned, was the end of Sunday. The
drawing-room door, it is of no interest to record, remained locked
until Monday. Until twenty minutes past Monday, to be precise.
George’s brain, it must be allowed (and George himself would have been
the first to allow it) was not a subtle organ. It worked, much the
same as a donkey-engine works; but there is little finesse about a
donkey engine. During the early hours of the night George’s brain
turned out for him a large number of straightforward schemes for
arriving at Manstead the next morning without a passenger; but they
were crude. George quite recognised that. The most ingenious was that
he should start at six o’clock, before his passenger should so much as
have opened an eyelid. Reluctantly George was compelled to reject even
this. He had given his word, and unless a plan presented itself to
involve the inevitable breaking of this inconvenient tie, and
consistently with the ways of perfect gentility as George understood
them, he must keep it. It is almost superfluous to add that no plan
did present itself.
Perhaps Monica had caught something of the notable lack of warmth in
George’s voice the previous evening. In any case, she was evidently
leaving nothing to chance. A forty-mile motor trip was an event in
Monica’s life, and Monica liked her life to be eventful. At half-past
nine she presented herself on George’s front-doorstep, hatted,
fur-coated and gauntlet-gloved, the complete motorist. George greeted
her with ghastly geniality.
An impartial spectator, observing with pain George’s laboured attempts
to appear hearty, would have said that George was hard to please.
Monica looked the sort of passenger whom any right-minded,
car-possessing bachelor would go miles out of his way to collect. Her
pretty, eager face flushed with excitement, her tongue prattling
merrily, and her trim, fur-encased figure very nearly jumping with
pleasure, what better company could such a right-minded man desire?
George was evidently not right-minded. His face, as he walked uneasily
at Monica’s side towards the station, bore an expression of mingled
apprehension and gloom; he looked as if he strongly suspected Monica
of having a hose-pipe concealed somewhere about her person. George
need not have bothered. Monica had few things concealed about her
person, and certainly not a hose-pipe. A young woman with any pretence
to fashion seldom wears a hose-pipe in these days.
She began to talk very earnestly about Dora. Monica, it appeared, had
long cherished the conviction that she, too, had a call to the stage.
She had taken part occasionally in local amateur theatricals at home,
and though that was of course nothing to go by, people really had said
quite decent things. Not that she wanted to swank or anything like
that, but she did somehow _feel_ she could act. Did George think that
Dora would be too bored to give her some advice? Did Dora know any
managers? Had Dora enough influence to get one of them to give Monica
a trial? Did George think Dora would let Monica come and see her in
London? Was it possible to see Dora at the theatre? Could Dora, did
George think, let Monica have a peep _behind the scenes_—just a tiny
peep? What did George think about this, about that, and about the
other?
George began to brighten. Here was somebody who actually wanted to
know his opinion. Very few people ever wanted to know George’s
opinion. It was a pleasant novelty. Monica had improved. In the old
days she had shown no signs of interest in George’s opinion. If she
had consulted George as to his candid opinion, he would have informed
her that on the whole he did not think he much wanted to dance before
the wedding-guests; but she had done nothing of the sort. Now, she
seemed to be hanging on his words. By Jove, yes; Monica _had_
improved. George forgot all about hose-pipes and became very nearly
animated.
No, George’s brain was not a subtle organ. It never occurred to him
for a moment that his sudden importance was merely owing to the fact
that he was his sister’s brother. He accepted Monica’s interest in his
opinion as a tribute to his own worth, and as he received very few
tributes of that nature was correspondingly delighted. Somebody once
said something about ignorance and wisdom, turning a neat phrase upon
the advisability in certain cases of the one and the drawbacks
attendant upon the other. He might have applied his aphorism to George
that morning. In his folly George expanded like a flower in the sun,
and looked back with incredulous astonishment to the remote time when
he had brooded sorrowfully upon radiators and petrol-tanks in
connection with this extraordinarily nice young person.
A very pleasant morning was spent.
George and Monica were not the only two people to spend a pleasant
morning. Cynthia did also in her way, and Mr. Doyle and Guy too, were
not ill-pleased with it, though their enjoyment was not wholly
unmixed. It was one thing to realise the use to them of Alan’s
presence; it was another to obtain a monopoly of it.
For Alan was sorely torn. On the one hand was a perfectly topping
murder mystery, right on the premises, which, of course, demanded the
most breathless and undivided attention; on the other, within only a
few yards was a real genuine chorus-girl, who was going away that same
afternoon; and Alan was naturally a good deal interested in
chorus-girls, as befitted a young man of fourteen.
There is a ring about the word “chorus-girl.” One wonders whether it
will ever quite outlive its naughty Victorian associations. The
chorus-girl of to-day is more respectable than a churchwarden, more
straight than a straight line (though having more breadth to her
length; even to-day, one gathers, some chorus-girls are tolerably
broad-minded), more refined than Grade “A” petrol—or so we are
earnestly given to understand by those who ought to know. Yet still in
clubs and places where men gather, the bare mention of the word is
enough to provoke the knowing wink and the cunning dig in the ribs.
And where the clubs wink the public schools guffaw; there is no place
where tradition is so strong as a public school. It gave Alan a
pleasurable feeling of doggishness just to enter the room where Dora
was sedately reading a magazine; to sit on the same couch with her was
sheer daredevilry.
Here he was, yes, he Alan Spence, alone in a room with a chorus girl,
exchanging light badinage, keeping his wicked end up as well as a
grown man! But for the unfortunate absence of champagne and oysters
(the inevitable concomitant of all genuine chorus-girls, as any
Victorian novelist will tell you) the scene was as abandoned as you
like. Alan was looking forward quite intensely to a number of casual
conversations next term which would begin; “Yes, a chorus-girl I know,
told me. . . .” Or, “Did you see _Thumbs Up!_ last hols? I knew one of
the chorus-girls in it. Quite a decent kid. . . .” Or, “Chorus-girls
don’t always dye their hair, you know. One of the girls in _Thumbs
Up!_—Dora, her name is; frightfully decent sort—told me that . . .”
That Dora really was George’s sister, Alan could still hardly bring
himself to believe; but he was quite sure he knew why her presence was
being kept so dark. (Yes, madam, public schools are dreadful places,
aren’t they? I certainly shouldn’t send your boy to one.)
Inspector Cottingham did not put in an appearance till nearly
half-past eleven, so that the two conspirators were not unduly pressed
for time. Their idea was a simple one. They wished Alan to make the
discovery for himself that the undisputed footprint of Mr. Reginald
Foster in the flower-bed bore a striking likeness to certain newly
manufactured prints on the river bank, and to draw the obvious
conclusion. This conclusion they were then prepared to scoff at and
deride, with the result that Alan, seeking a more sympathetic audience
for the news with which he ought to be bursting, would have recourse
to the Inspector. The Inspector was then hopefully expected to put
three and two together, and make it four. There is nothing so honest
as honesty, and in this means Guy and Mr. Doyle saw a way of causing
their new clues to be officially swallowed with no possible suspicions
as to their administration.
Up to a point matters turned out as they intended. Alan was conveyed
into the garden immediately after breakfast, as agog as Guy could have
hoped, and shown Mr. Foster’s footprint; thence he was led to the
river bank and shown the other footprints. Unfortunately, however, he
failed to notice any connecting link. He was impressed, even thrilled,
but he displayed no brightness of uptake. Guy left him for a moment to
confer with Mr. Doyle, who was strolling through the dividing gate
between the gardens to join them; when they looked round, the lad was
gone.
It took them a quarter of an hour to run him to earth, in George’s
drawing-room. Then they led him back and repeated the process. It was
like training a dog to find tennis-balls; the dog is willing enough to
gaze for a space into the shrubbery, but he hasn’t the faintest idea
what he is expected to find inside it. Guy found himself in an even
worse position than that of the dog’s master, for he was precluded
from giving an intimation that there was anything to be found at all.
Having gazed respectfully at the footprints a second time, Alan
announced that they certainly were top-hole and took himself back to
the drawing-room and daredevilry.
Mr. Doyle retrieved him five minutes later with a resigned expression
and led him back once more. This time the two did not leave things
quite so much to chance. They pointed out to each other with bland
surprise that Mr. Foster must have had a tear in the soles of one of
his boots; they remarked that it might be quite interesting to look
around for other such footprints with a tear in one of the soles; they
obtusely ignored a string of such prints leading from the flower-bed
towards the library, and another leading from the latter to the bank.
Then they observed loudly that they were going in for a short time to
have a smoke in George’s drawing-room in the absence of Dora, who was
upstairs making her bed, her bed, upstairs making her _bed_! They
went, and through the curtains of the window peeped out upon their
victim.
Fixity of purpose does occasionally meet with its reward. Alan having
absorbed the information that Dora was no longer on view, began to
walk aimlessly about, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the
ground. They saw him stop suddenly and stoop. He progressed slowly in
a bent position. He crawled like a crab towards the library windows,
and thence to the bank. He ran swiftly across the garden and through
the separating gate. Guy and Mr. Doyle, timing things to a nicety, met
him half-way across George’s lawn.
“I _say_,” said Alan, “I’ve made the hell of a discovery!”
“Oh?” said Guy.
“Really?” said Mr. Doyle. “But talking of emigration, Nesbitt, I do
think that the Government——”
“Listen, you chaps! You know what you were saying about footprints
just now? Well, dashed if I haven’t——”
“Footprints?” said Guy vaguely. “Were we?”
“Good Lord, yes; you know you were. About that chap Foster having a
bit out of one of his boots. You know. Well, I’ve spotted tons of
other prints just the same. Do you know what I think, Guy? I think
Foster’s one of ’em!”
“One of whom, Alan?” Guy asked in maddeningly tolerant tones.
“The gang, of course. Stands to reason. Come and have a squint. On the
bank, his footprints are, up to the library, all round. I——”
“Is Alan often taken like this, Guy?” asked Mr. Doyle rudely.
“Foster!” Guy laughed in a superior way. “Come, Alan, come. You’ll be
saying he’s the Man with the Broken Nose next.”
“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if he was,” retorted Alan defiantly.
“You needn’t laugh. He’s mixed up with ’em all right. Bet you anything
you like. I should tell the police if I were you.”
“The police!” crowed Mr. Doyle, and staggered as if his mirth were
incapable of human control.
“The police!” echoed Guy, and staggered too.
Alan flushed. “All right. You see! If you won’t tell ’em, I will. Yes,
you can laugh if you like, but you’ll jolly soon find I’m right. Huh!
Fancy having a clue like that under your noses and never spotting it.
Huh!” And with considerable dignity Alan stalked, so well as a
slightly stout youth may stalk, towards the road.
“Go and ask Mr. Foster if he’s ever broken his nose, Alan,” Mr. Doyle
called after him derisively.
“All right, blast you, I will!” Master Spence called back.
Doyle caught Guy’s arm. “Look, there’s the Colonel and Cottingham
coming down the road. Nesbitt, I think this is where we retire.”
They did not retire at once, however. They waited till the three
actors on their stage met and stopped. The words came faintly to them:
“I say, are you the Inspector? I read about you in the _Sunday
Courier_. I’m Mrs. Nesbitt’s brother. I say, were you going to have a
look at the scene of the crime? I say, have you noticed something
jolly important about those footprints? I have. I’ll tell you if you
like. I told my brother-in-law, but he laughed. It’s jolly well
nothing to laugh about. I say, do you know if that chap Foster’s ever
broken his nose?”
The two in the garden began to stroll towards George’s house.
“He might have been coached for the part,” observed Mr. Doyle with
some awe.
“He wouldn’t have done it as well if he had been,” murmured Guy.
“Doyle, this is all very pleasant and interesting, isn’t it?”
They went in to warn Dora that policemen were about. She was not
there.
To tell the truth, Dora had found herself, except for short minutes
during the last thirty-six hours, frankly bored. In addition she was
not altogether satisfied with the part she had played in the comedy;
it was all right, so far as it went, but it had not gone far enough.
She thought she saw a way of combining amusement with a little helpful
spadework. Unnoticed, she had slipped out of the house and gone off to
combine them.