"Well--and what about getting me away?" asked Mallalieu. "How's that to be done?"

"I'll tell you that tomorrow," replied Miss Pett. "You make yourself easy--I'll see you're all right. And now I'll go and cook you a nice chop, for no doubt you'll do with something after all the stuff you had to hear in the court."

"You were there, then?" asked Mallalieu. "Lot o' stuff and nonsense! A sensible woman like you----"

"A sensible woman like me only believes what she can prove," answered Miss Pett.

She went away and shut the door, and Mallalieu, left to himself, took another heartening pull at his gla.s.s and proceeded to re-inspect his quarters. The fire was blazing up: the room was warm and comfortable; certainly he was fortunate. But he a.s.sured himself that the window was properly shuttered, barred, and fully covered by the thick curtain, and he stood by it for a moment listening intently for any sound of movement without. No sound came, not even the wail of a somewhat strong wind which he knew to be sweeping through the pine trees, and he came to the conclusion that the old stone walls were almost sound-proof and that if he and Miss Pett conversed in ordinary tones no eavesdroppers outside the cottage could hear them. And presently he caught a sound within the cottage--the sound of the sizzling of chops on a gridiron, and with it came the pleasant and grateful smell of cooking meat, and Mallalieu decided that he was hungry.

To a man fixed as Mallalieu was at that time the evening which followed was by no means unpleasant. Miss Pett served him as nice a little supper as his own housekeeper would have given him; later on she favoured him with her company. They talked of anything but the events of the day, and Mallalieu began to think that the queer-looking woman was a remarkably shrewd and intelligent person. There was but one drawback to his captivity--Miss Pett would not let him smoke. Cigars, she said, might be smelt outside the cottage, and n.o.body would credit her with the consumption of such gentleman-like luxuries.

"And if I were you," she said, at the end of an interesting conversation which had covered a variety of subjects, "I should try to get a good night's rest. I'll mix you a good gla.s.s of toddy such as the late Kitely always let me mix for his nightcap, and then I'll leave you. The bed's aired, there's plenty of clothing on it, all's safe, and you can sleep as if you were a baby in a cradle, for I always sleep like a dog, with one ear and an eye open, and I'll take good care naught disturbs you, so there!"

Mallalieu drank the steaming gla.s.s of spirits and water which Miss Pett presently brought him, and took her advice about going to bed. Without ever knowing anything about it he fell into such a slumber as he had never known in his life before. It was indeed so sound that he never heard Miss Pett steal into his room, was not aware that she carefully withdrew the precious waistcoat which, through a convenient hole in the wall, she had watched him deposit under the rest of his garments on the chair at his side, never knew that she carried it away into the living-room on the other side of the cottage. For the strong flavour of the lemon and the sweetness of the sugar which Miss Pett had put into the hot toddy had utterly obscured the very slight taste of something else which she had put in--something which was much stronger than the generous dose of whisky, and was calculated to plunge Mallalieu into a stupor from which not even an earthquake could have roused him.

Miss Pett examined the waistcoat at her leisure. Her thin fingers went through every pocket and every paper, through the bank-notes, the scrip, the shares, the securities. She put everything back in its place, after a careful reckoning and estimation of the whole. And Mallalieu was as deeply plunged in his slumbers as ever when she went back into his room with her shaded light and her catlike tread, and she replaced the garment exactly where she found it, and went out and shut the door as lightly as a b.u.t.terfly folds its wings.

It was then eleven o'clock at night, and Miss Pett, instead of retiring to her bed, sat down by the living-room fire and waited. The poke bonnet had been replaced by the gay turban, and under its gold and scarlet her strange, skeleton-like face gleamed like old ivory as she sat there with the firelight playing on it. And so immobile was she, sitting with her sinewy skin-and-bone arms lying folded over her silk ap.r.o.n, that she might have been taken for an image rather than for a living woman.

But as the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece neared midnight, Miss Pett suddenly moved. Her sharp ears caught a scratching sound on the shutter outside the window. And noiselessly she moved down the pa.s.sage, and noiselessly unbarred the front door, and just as noiselessly closed it again behind the man who slipped in--Christopher, her nephew.

CHAPTER XXIV

STRICT BUSINESS LINES

Mr. Christopher Pett, warned by the uplifted finger of his aunt, tip-toed into the living-room, and setting down his small travelling bag on the table proceeded to divest himself of a thick overcoat, a warm m.u.f.fler, woollen gloves, and a silk hat. And Miss Pett, having closed the outer and inner doors, came in and glanced inquiringly at him.

"Which way did you come, this time?" she inquired.

"High Gill," replied Christopher. "Got an afternoon express that stopped there. Jolly cold it was crossing those moors of yours, too, I can tell you!--I can do with a drop of something. I say--is there anything afoot about here?--anything going on?"

"Why?" asked Miss Pett, producing the whisky and the lemons. "And how do you mean?"

Christopher pulled an easy chair to the fire and stretched his hands to the blaze.

"Up there, on the moor," he answered. "There's fellows going about with lights--lanterns, I should say. I didn't see 'em close at hand--there were several of 'em crossing about--like fire-flies--as if the chaps who carried 'em were searching for something."

Miss Pett set the decanter and the materials for toddy on the table at her nephew's side, and took a covered plate from the cupboard in the corner.

"Them's potted meat sandwiches," she said. "Very toothsome you'll find 'em--I didn't prepare much, for I knew you'd get your dinner on the train. Yes, well, there is something afoot--they are searching. Not for something, though, but for somebody. Mallalieu!"

Christopher, his mouth full of sandwiches, and his hand laid on the decanter, lifted a face full of new and alert interest.

"The Mayor!" he exclaimed.

"Quite so," a.s.sented Miss Pett. "Anthony Mallalieu, Esquire, Mayor of Highmarket. They want him, does the police--bad!"

Christopher still remained transfixed. The decanter was already tilted in his hand, but he tilted it no further; the sandwich hung bulging in his cheek.

"Good Lord!" he said. "Not for----" he paused, nodding his head towards the front of the cottage where the wood lay "--not for--that? They ain't suspicioning _him_?"

"No, but for killing his clerk, who'd found something out," replied Miss Pett. "The clerk was killed Sunday; they took up Mallalieu and his partner today, and tried 'em, and Mallalieu slipped the police somehow, after the case was adjourned, and escaped. And--he's here!"

Christopher had begun to pour the whisky into his gla.s.s. In his astonishment he rattled the decanter against the rim.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Here? In this cottage?"

"In there," answered Miss Pett. "In Kitely's room. Safe and sound.

There's no danger. He'll not wake. I mixed him a gla.s.s of toddy before he went to bed, and neither earthquakes nor fire-alarms 'ull wake him before nine o'clock tomorrow morning."

"Whew!" said Christopher. "Um! it's a dangerous game--it's harbouring, you know. However, they'd suspect that he'd come here. Whatever made him come here?"

"I made him come here," replied Miss Pett. "I caught him in the wood outside there, as I was coming back from the Town Hall, so I made him come in. It'll pay very well, Chris."

Mr. Pett, who was lifting his gla.s.s to his lips, arrested it in mid-air, winked over its rim at his aunt, and smiled knowingly.

"You're a good hand at business, I must say, old lady!" he remarked admiringly. "Of course, of course, if you're doing a bit of business out of it----"

"That'll come tomorrow," said Miss Pett, seating herself at the table and glancing at her nephew's bag. "We'll do our own business tonight.

Well, how have you come on?"

Christopher munched and drank for a minute or two. Then he nodded, with much satisfaction in his manner.

"Very well," he answered. "I got what I consider a very good price. Sold the whole lot to another Brixton property-owner, got paid, and have brought you the money. All of it--ain't even taken my costs, my expenses, and my commission out of it--yet."

"How much did you sell for?" asked Miss Pett.

Christopher pulled his bag to his side and took a bundle of red-taped doc.u.ments from it.

"You ought to think yourself jolly lucky," he said, wagging his head admonitorily at his aunt. "I see a lot of the state of the property market, and I can a.s.sure you I did uncommonly well for you. I shouldn't have got what I did if it had been sold by auction. But the man I sold to was a bit keen, 'cause he's already got adjacent property, and he gave rather more than he would ha' done in other circ.u.mstances. I got,"

he continued, consulting the topmost of his papers, "I got, in round figures, three thousand four hundred--to be exact, three thousand four hundred, seventeen, five, eleven."

"Where's the money?" demanded Miss Pett.

"It's here," answered Christopher, tapping his breast. "In my pocket-book. Notes, big and little--so that we can settle up."

Miss Pett stretched out her hand.

"Hand it over!" she said.

Christopher gave his aunt a sidelong glance.

"Hadn't we better reckon up my costs and commission first?" he suggested. "Here's an account of the costs--the commission, of course, was to be settled between you and me."